“Black grew the sky,—all black, all black; / The clouds were everywhere”

For Poetry Monday, one from my second-favorite MacSpaunday poet:


House on a Cliff, Louis MacNeice

Indoors the tang of a tiny oil lamp. Outdoors
The winking signal on the waste of sea.
Indoors the sound of the wind. Outdoors the wind.
Indoors the locked heart and the lost key.

Outdoors the chill, the void, the siren. Indoors
The strong man pained to find his red blood cools,
While the blind clock grows louder, faster. Outdoors
The silent moon, the garrulous tides she rules.

Indoors ancestral curse-cum-blessing. Outdoors
The empty bowl of heaven, the empty deep.
Indoors a purposeful man who talks at cross
Purposes, to himself, in a broken sleep.


---L.

Subject quote from The Ballad of Carmilhan, Henry Longfellow.