First, the moon was glaring, the street and houses and naked trees exposed. Then, after moonset, the landscape was darkened and there passed an hour of brilliant stars, with Orion, and the bears, and then, as unwinking Jupiter rose, wind and clouds arrived and the sky became a marbled roof, starless. I can't decide which period I enjoyed more. The cold tonight has been brisk rather than penetrating, and I think there might be a bit of rain. It smells like impending rain, at least. I have no idea why the weather is being so nice all of a sudden. It makes me think maybe it's planning something. Maybe it intends to soon bury me under masses of snow, and is now merely toying with me, throwing me off guard. You never can tell with weather.
Sunday Verse
Interruption
by Robert Graves
If ever against this easy blue and silver
Hazed-over countryside of thoughtfulness,
Far behind in the mind and above,
Boots from before and below approach tramping,
Watch how their premonition will display
A forward countryside, low in the distance--
A picture-postcard square of June grass;
Will warm a summer season, trim the hedges,
Cast the river about on either flank,
Start the late cuckoo emptily calling,
Invent a rambling tale of moles and voles,
Furnish a path with stiles.
Watch how the field will broaden, the feet nearing,
Sprout with great dandelions and buttercups,
Widen and heighten. The blue and silver
Fogs at the border of this all-grass.
Interruption looms gigantified,
Lurches against, treads thundering feet through,
Blots the landscape, scatters all,
Roars and rumbles like a dark tunnel,
Is gone.
The picture-postcard grass and trees
Swim back to central; it is a large patch,
It is a modest, failing patch of green,
The postage stamp of its departure,
Clouded with blue and silver, closing in now
To a plain countryside of less and less,
Unpeopled and unfeatured blue and silver,
Before, behind, above.
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