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January 8, 2014

Come In by Robert Frost

howard_phipps_edge_of_the_wood__broadchalke.jpg

As I came to the edge of the woods,
Thrush music -- hark!
Now if it was dusk outside,
Inside it was dark.

Too dark in the woods for a bird
By sleight of wing
To better its perch for the night,
Though it still could sing.

The last of the light of the sun
That had died in the west
Still lived for one song more
In a thrush's breast.

Far in the pillared dark
Thrush music went --
Almost like a call to come in
To the dark and lament.

But no, I was out for stars;
I would not come in.
I meant not even if asked;
And I hadn't been.

"Grief and reason are language’s most efficient fuel—or, if you will, poetry’s indelible ink.
Frost’s reliance on them… almost gives you the sense that his dipping into this inkpot had to do with the hope of reducing the level of its contents; you detect a sort of vested interest on his part. Yet the more one dips into it, the more it brims with this black essence of existence, and the more one’s mind, like one’s fingers, gets soiled by this liquid. For the more there is of grief, the more there is of reason. -- Joseph Brodsky

Posted by gerardvanderleun at January 8, 2014 9:46 AM. This is an entry on the sideblog of American Digest: Check it out.

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