21 June - Poem

21 June

   Fade then, light; but longing never will.
   Midsummer makes the west spectacular
   and even gives its last glow a show
   of reluctance, as if it had postponed
   midnight. But midnight is too faithful.
   You're back among the black, the black,
   you're down and fit to drown, to drown,
   you're padding into nightmare town.
   You haven't got a house, a bed-light,
   there are no clocks or telephones out there,
   you are on your own, you have a large panic
   waiting to break through your chest, you are panting,
   you count, as it arrives, each brimming pang.
   What a clutch of sheets! What a parody of pain!

   The longest day, the night is not so long.
   You fling back the curtains, the morning sky
   is like a meadow. What is it you want?
   I don't know. You cannot walk there. No.
   So what do you want? The morning, perhaps,
   and then I want the day, another day.

Edwin Morgan is retired as Professor of English at the University of Glasgow and continues to live in Glasgow. His poems, translations, and essays have been widely published and anthologized. His numerous books of poetry include Virtual and Other Realities, Sonnets from Scotland, Poems of Thirty Years (which won the Scottish Arts Council Book Award), From Glasgow to Saturn, The New Divan, Concrete Poems, and a collection of translations, Rites of Passage.

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