Two poems, two songs, by two artists

The Night, The Porch

To stare at nothing is to learn by heart
What all of us will be swept into, and baring oneself
To the wind is feeling the ungraspable somewhere close by.
Trees can sway or be still. Day or night can be what they wish.
What we desire, moer than a season or weather, is the comfort
Of the matter, which is why even now we seem to be waiting
For something whose appearance would be its vanishing-
The sound, say, of a few leaves falling, or just one leaf,
Or less. There is no end to what we can learn. The book out there
Tells us as much, and was never written with us in mind.

--Mark Strand (from A Blizzard of One)

Coming To This

We have done what we wanted.
We have discarded dreams, preferring the heavy industry

of each other, and we have welcomed grief

and called ruin the impossible habit to break.

And now we are here.

The dinner is ready and we cannot eat.

The meat sits in the white lake of its dish.

The wine waits.

Coming to this

has its rewards: nothing is promised, nothing is taken away.

We have no heart or saving grace,

no place to go, no reason to remain.

--Mark Strand (from Darker)

Bonnie "Prince" Billy - Love Comes To Me (from The Letting Go)
Bonnie "Prince" Billy - I See A Darkness (from I See A Darkness)