Night Images

By Robert Fitzgerald 1910–1985 Robert Fitzgerald

Late in the cold night wakened, and heard wind,

And lay with eyes closed and silent, knowing

These words how bodiless they are, this darkness

Empty under my roof and the panes rattling

Roughed by wind. And so lay and imagined

Somewhere far off black seas heavy-shouldered

Plunging on sand and the ebb off-streaming and

Thunder forever. So lying bethought me, friend,

What traffic ghouls have, or this be legend,

In low inland hollows of the earth, under

Shade of moon, the night moaning, and bitter frost;

And feared the riches of my bones, long given

Into this earth, should tumble to their hands.

No girl or ghost beside me, and I lonely,

Remembering gardens, lilac scent, or twilight

Descending late in summer on that town,

I lay and found my years departed from me,

And feared the cold bed and the wind, absurdly

Alone with silence and the trick of tears.

Source: Spring Shade: Poems 1931-1970 (New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1971)

Biography

Robert Fitzgerald (1910 - 1985) was born in Springfield, Illinois, and attended Harvard University, where he received an excellent education in the classics. After college, he started to translate Greek poetry to keep up his skills. They were published and soon earned him the reputation as one of the best Greek translators in English. Though more known for his translations, Fitzgerald is also a poet in his own right. In poems . . .

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