The blue river is grey at morning
and evening. There is twilight
at dawn and dusk. I lie in the dark
wondering if this quiet in me now
is a beginning or an end.
JACK GILBERT, born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, has published four volumes
of poetry: Views of Jeopardy, which won the Yale Younger Poets
Award, Monolithos, The Great Fires, and Refusing
Heaven, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and The
L.A. Times Book Prize. A new collection, The Dance Most of All,
is forthcoming.