The Silver Lily

By Louise Glück b. 1943 Louise Gluck

The nights have grown cool again, like the nights

of early spring, and quiet again. Will

speech disturb you? We're

alone now; we have no reason for silence.

Can you see, over the garden—the full moon rises.

I won't see the next full moon.

In spring, when the moon rose, it meant

time was endless. Snowdrops

opened and closed, the clustered

seeds of the maples fell in pale drifts.

White over white, the moon rose over the birch tree.

And in the crook, where the tree divides,

leaves of the first daffodils, in moonlight

soft greenish-silver.

We have come too far together toward the end now

to fear the end. These nights, I am no longer even certain

I know what the end means. And you, who've been with a man—

after the first cries,

doesn't joy, like fear, make no sound?

Source: The Wild Iris (The Ecco Press, 1992)

Biography

Louise Glück is considered by many to be one of America’s most talented contemporary poets. The poet Robert Hass has called her “one of the purest and most accomplished lyric poets now writing,” and her poetry is noted for its technical precision, sensitivity and insight into loneliness, family relationships, divorce, and death. Frequently described as “spare,” James K. Robinson in Contemporary Women Poets also noted that . . .

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