Night without sleep

Robinson Jeffers

The poet of Carmel, California writing a bit before WW2. A dark time it was then. Darker now. Why this is so requires no exceptional insight. The tension between the truth and the lie has always been the problematic. Francis Bacon captured it well in his comment: “What is truth?” asked jesting Pilate who would not stay for answer.”

In Century 21 the triumph of the lie is greater than any period of human history. The lie prospers because we know nothing of truth as a mass, and speakers or writers of truth mumble in a corner to shadows called people who hear nothing beguiling. What to say about collectives of people who ignore the obvious and drive off a cliff because the device they navigate their vehicle tells them to. What can anyone do without truth? Can we heal the sick, set a broken limb, raise children well without truth? Can we govern ourselves as free people without truth? And now when in the last few years all institutions censor truth and persecute speakers of truth we few sensitive souls have nightmares and day horrors. Nights without sleep and days darker than night at noon.

Xxx

The world's as the world is; the nations rearm and prepare to

change; the age of tyrants returns;

The greatest civilization that has ever existed builds itself higher

towers on breaking foundations.

Recurrent episodes; they were determined when the ape's children

first ran in packs, chipped flint to an edge.

I lie and hear dark rain beat the roof, and the blind wind.

In the morning perhaps

I shall find strength again

To value the immense beauty of this time of the world, the flowers

of decay their pitiful loveliness, the fever-dream

Tapestries that back the drama and are called the future. This

ebb of vitality feels the ignoble and cruel

Incidents, not the vast abstract order.

I lie and hear dark rain beat

the roof, and the night-blind wind.

In the Ventana country darkness and rain and the roar of waters

fill the deep mountain-throats.

The creekside shelf of sand where we lay last August under a slip of stars,

And firelight played on the leaning gorge-walls, is drowned and

lost. The deer of the country huddle on a ridge

In a close herd under madrone-trees; they tremble when a rockslide

goes down, they open great darkness-

Drinking eyes and press closer.

Cataracts of rock

Rain down the mountain from cliff to cliff and torment the

stream-bed. The stream deals with them. The laurels are wounded,

Redwoods go down with their earth and lie thwart the gorge. I

hear the torrent boulders battering each other,

I feel the flesh of the mountain move on its bones in the wet

darkness.

Is this more beautiful

Than man's disasters? These wounds will heal in their time; so

will humanity's. This is more beautiful ... at night . . .