What the Owl of Death
Said to Sleep and to Peace in
the Sarcophagus
- for my sister, Heather -
Two forms move among the dead, high sleep who by his highness quiets them, high peace upon whose shoulders even the heavens rest, two brothers. And a third form, she that says good-by in the darkness, speaking quietly there, to those that cannot say good-by themselves.
- Wallace Stevens, “The Owl in the Sarcophagus”
Evening falls each evening near an owl it never knows.
Peering out of cracks through which the wind blows…
Don’t suppose
she’s never thought to wonder why
no one wakes to hear her or her sigh.
Sleep maintains the silence. No one hears and nothing’s heard,
though Peace reads off the letters of its word.
She’s the third.
She flies between them, pillared high.
Wondering aloud, she flutters by.
She asks them:
“Heaven rests upon your shoulders.
Do you think they find it that much colder
up at central command
within that starry band
where the sky is planned,
or do they warm themselves with rays
frozen in a frieze of former days?
“Why can’t they choir out their own farewells?
Do we solace them with something of themselves?
How I long to take flight
into that outer night
that ends each day in light.
Oh vanish, columns! Fall away!
Banish me to heaven’s other day!”
Peace and Sleep are brothers and their sister wings goodbye.
They lowered their beams that once, with morning nigh.
Bye and bye
she comes back now and then to fly
among the crypts she blesses from on high
in that sky.
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