Made Shine

By Josephine Miles 1911–1985 Josephine Miles

This face had no use for light, took none of it,

Grew cavernous against stars, bore into noon

A dark of midnight by its own resources.

Yet where it lay in sleep, where the pillows held it

With the blind plaster over it and the four walls

Keeping the night carefully, it was undone.

Sixty-watt light, squared to a window frame,

Across a well of air, across wind and window

Leaped and made shine the dark face in its sleep.

Josephine Miles, “Made Shine” from Collected Poems. Copyright � 1983 by Josephine Miles. Reprinted with the permission of the University of Illinois Press.

Source: Collected Poems 1930-83 (1983)

Biography

Lifelong California resident Josephine Miles distinguished herself as an educator, spending her entire academic career at the University of California, Berkeley, where she was the first woman to be tenured in the English department. She is remembered as the editor of anthologies and critical texts, as an author of books on poetic style and language, and as an award-winning poet who produced over a dozen books of poems. Her . . .

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