NIGHT

“The night walked down the sky with the moon in her hand.” - Frederick L. Knowles

Night

THE SCENE:
Deserted streets;
Cold lights;
Fogged up windscreen.
The street cleaners (pity them!)
Go hither and thither like wraiths.
Neon signs, cheap, inhospitable
Advertise dives that stay open the whole night long.
The taxi drivers (pity them!)
Earn a night’s living – barely awake.

The traffic lights:
Green,
Amber, red,
Amber, green.
Quiet streets,
Cars parked in rows like gravestones.
A thousand dark windows of houses,
Inside which loud snores, you think, resound.

The leaves, falling constantly
As if of silver, lit by the cruel street light.
A thousand leaves,
Swept by the wind
In waves, huge billows
Of silver, dead leaves.

PROTAGONIST:
And I.
I who drive alone in the frigid night.
Betrayed, rejected, forlorn.
And I who drive, seemingly, a thousand miles.
And I’ve forgotten – some stars that jeer
As though embroidered with silver thread on velvet sky,
A suitable backdrop to the impersonal high-rise apartment buildings,
Each hiding a thousand miseries.

CHORUS:
O night, enchantress,
You bewitch in your dark veils,
Night of a thousand secrets!
Dark goddess, obscure peri
Who conceals a thousand mysteries.
O night, child abductress
Beguiler, stealer, who
In your cloak’s deep folds corrupts unstoppingly.

Night of a thousand songs,
Moonlit and strange, silver-black
You give us without pity
A thousand flimsy dreams,
Only for to reclaim them each dawn
As the cock crows…