Faithful and Virtuous Night

by Louise Glück

We had escaped from death— or was this the view from the precipice?

If it is so difficult to begin, imagine what it will be to end—

Restless, are you restless?

It had occurred to me that all human beings are divided into those who wish to move forward and those who wish to go back. Or you could say, those who wish to keep moving and those who want to be stopped in their tracks as by the blazing sword.

Of course, in a certain sense I was not empty-handed: I had my colored pencils. In another sense, that is my point: I had accepted substitutes.

once one begins, there are only endings.

I write about you all the time, I said aloud. Every time I say “I,” it refers to you.

I was like you once, he added, in love with turbulence.

Whereas truth—well, truth as I saw it was expressed as stillness.

he has a hunger to make his name.

When you hear this again, she said, perhaps the words will be less intimidating, if you remember how you first heard them, in the voice of a little girl.

feelings emanated from the surface, feelings of helplessness or desolation—

How small it was, how brief. Brief, brief, but inside me now, which the stars could never be.