Prairie Night

TWO POEMS

| PRAIRIE NIGHT

No night will come again like this, with moon

Melting the prairie, drawing up the fog.

No night will come again for us, not soon

Or any time. One reticent thin-voiced frog

Knows this, and our hearts know it-and the circling tide

Of winds blowing over the prairie, that will not abide,

That will not pause and be quiet, as the planted moon. ...

But you lie to me. You say, "This will come soon,

This will come again, a moment . . . and our lives shall

break,

As they have broken, each for the other's sake,

When the prairie night, covering lovers, will be kind!"

Yet I know that we shall go separate. Behind

This swimming time of fog and the drifting light

Is slow-decaying loss, and the feel of decay.

And this night shall never be another night,

Nor ever reach the sunlight of a day.