Stevens

Before the last ending of autumn,

A startled cry from inside

Seemed like a mind in its sound.

I knew only what I had heard,

A baby’s cry, at midnight or after,

Above the late November wind.

The moon was rising at two,

Once a crumpled mask above dead leaves . . .

It could not be inside.

Not from the chiaroscuro

Of sleep’s faded paper sky . . .

The moon wasn’t coming inside.

That startled cry—it was

A tone whose song preceded tuning.

It was nothing like the old moon,

Surrounded by its echoic tone

Being right here. It was what

I’ve always known to be real.