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Saturday, November 20, 2010

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.