Psalm on a Summer Night

The summer darkness is soft
here on the front steps
bleeding invisibly into the night
How long will it be
this intolerable love
this affliction of ecstasy
The warm black river
moves into the warm black sea

By day whose face can you not search
and immediately know too much
how the good suffer
how the cruel are undone
by refusing to suffer

Plath bled
tortured by vivid tulips
only a pot of red tulips
but violent with life
like a knife killing and killing
the only -- the most brutal way to die
Chaotic beauty stabs the eye
pity for fools is shredding the heart

Exhausted by the world
to yet concede
how perfect is the world
and move like a chained tide
to the oblivion of heaven

Take the pulsing summer night
never to hold it just for songs
And take these songs
Take the bruise
of even most tender love

Attend me now my battered Lord
I can trust as the weary
are trusting for rest to this night
your silent your enfolding death