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Hymn to the Night

Every thinking creature adores the light
__Where twinkling stones and stars and flowers stun
Senseless matter into a sense of sight
__And all behold the splendors of the sun.
First masterpiece of the created world,
__God fashioned you but not like Adam’s wife,
____Spun from a rib composed of dirt and spit.
Your being from the darkness He unfurled.
__Thus I would hymn the other source of life,
____The sunless lap where newborn Christ must sit,

The uncreated Night, as old as God,
__A darkness that the act of light supposed,
Though naming it must perpetrate a fraud
__And open up a box that best stay closed.
Gigantic womb of pregnant emptiness,
__Erotic jeweler of the universe,
____Amorphous sister of eternity,
Ocean of stars, mysterious abyss,
__Distill your spirit through my quiet verse
____While I compose and watch and the hours flee.

Among the wealth of goods and pure delights
__You bless us with is sleep, island of rest
From life’s heavy labors and brutal fights,
__Where dreams embark the soul on her true quest.
The Ancients long equated sleep and death
__Since consciousness in both sloughs time and space
____And yet persists, they thought, to wake again.
But having seen the beauty of your face,
__The dead will never take another breath,
____Becalmed beyond the reach of gods and men.

How liberal with Aphrodite’s gifts
__You are, lovers who have enjoyed them know;
Your naked generosity uplifts
__The veils of beauty that your shadows throw.
Her breasts of hyacinth I sense are yours,
__The prairie of her back where poppies bloom,
____Her neck as slender as an apple tree,
Her mouth of mint, from which your wisdom pours,
__Her starry eyes and aureole of gloom—
____And yours, her silky zones of ecstasy.

But solitude reveals your pleasures, too.
__A walker strolls beyond the city gate
To taste a river stained in midnight blue,
__Then saunters home where deathless books await.
When all the crashing sounds of work subside,
__And all the evening’s revels fade away,
____Then one may sit and contemplate the soul.
Or grab a pen and to the muse confide
__The secret figures that assuage dismay
____Like poppies floating in a crystal bowl.

Sometimes the terrors come, and fear, and anguish,
__Blizzard of nausea that turns the sky green,
Leaving the nightingales sleepless while they languish
__In the despairing forests of their spleen.
Mother, destroyer, you hammered the spike
__That fixed the palm of Christ to the tree trunk.
____When you’re too close, spiders no longer spin,
And the wide perspectives of the world are shrunk
__To the circumference of the head of a pin.
____When will the lightning of melancholy strike?

Dawn breaks.  My song the midnight has out-sung!
__Then good-bye Night!  A mourning dove complains.
But wild astonishment will seize her young
__When midnight, universal midnight reigns!
Goddess, star-spangled cow, Egyptian Nuit,
__You who will console in the night of the tomb,
____When the last morning dawns like a black fruit
And earth and stars and moon are all undone,
__Creation will awake in your dark womb
____Beneath the blackness of the swallowed sun.

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Michael Taormina is Associate Professor of French literature in the Romance Languages Department at Hunter College, CUNY. He has translated French poetry, plays and philosophy, and he has written criticism on the early seventeenth-century poets François de Malherbe, Théophile de Viau, and Vincent Voiture.

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10 Responses

  1. Jeremiah Johnson

    Love these lines:

    The Ancients long equated sleep and death
    __Since consciousness in both sloughs time and space
    ____And yet persists, they thought, to wake again.

    They take Hamlet’s “To Be or Not . . . .” to a new level!

    And that fourth stanza is so beautifully erotic and reminiscent of The Song of Songs – it makes me want to go enjoy my conjugal bed 🙂

    I enjoyed too how you reflected on the Christian faith while weaving elements of ancient myth – reminds me of how Medieval theologians co-opted aspects of Greek and Roman mythology for their own purposes in better imagining the mind and works of God.

    Another line that connects:

    But solitude reveals your pleasures, too.
    __A walker strolls beyond the city gate

    I’ve taken many nighttime walks, some beyond the city gate!

    Thanks for an enjoyable, evocative read.

    Reply
    • Michael Taormina

      Dear Jeremiah, I’m not sure that I deserve such high praise, but I am glad you enjoyed the poem–the pleasure is the point, my theology is on shaky ground.

      Reply
  2. Roy Eugene Peterson

    Michael, there is much to recommend your poem and enjoy. On the other hand, pardon me for suggesting a series of changes that to my mind would improve it. Goodness knows my own poems are sometimes lacking and I have welcomed the occasional corrections proposed. I have never done this before on a posted poem, but I thought my comments may be of value.
    Verse 1: There are many nocturnal animals that also think, like owls.
    Line 7: I prefer “grit” to “spit” Grit has a double meaning and “spit”
    inhibits my enjoyment.
    Line 9: I would prefer a replacement for “hymn” such as “praise.”
    Line 10 leaves me cold.
    Verse 2: Line 2: I would have replaced supposed with “deposed,” “exposed,” or
    “imposed.”
    Line 10: I suggest changing the second “and” to “while.”
    Verse 3: Line 3: I am not enamored with ” Though naming it must perpe
    trate a fraud…” Why? comes to mind. What fraud?
    Line 6: “Sloughs” means to shed or cast off. In my mind a better
    word would be “spans” or something like that. Time and space
    to me are not shed but embraced.
    Verse 4: “Gloom” could be the stronger “doom.”
    Verse 5: Line 3: “Tastes?”
    Verse 6: Line 4: “Spleen?”
    Please forgive the intrusion.

    Reply
    • Michael Taormina

      Dear Roy, thanks for taking the time to read the poem. I await your own praise of night in your own style.

      Reply
  3. Joseph S. Salemi

    This is a beautiful hymn, and it puts me in mind of Rochester’s poem “On Nothing.” Both poems must contend with the difficulty of depicting something that is the negation of something positive (night negates day, and nothingness negates existence), while also singing its praises. Prof. Taormina manages to do it neatly and effectively with striking images of a “Gigantic womb,” an “Ocean of stars,” the connection of sleep and dreams, and erotic love.

    I wouldn’t change a syllable in it.

    Reply
    • Michael Taormina

      Dear Professor Salemi, I had forgotten about Rochester’s poem “On Nothing,” but paradoxical praise is indeed the spirit of my piece. Your opinion means a lot to me. Thanks for reading the poem.

      Reply
  4. Margaret Coats

    A fine hymn with rich vocabulary and a lofty tone. There’s also a distinct structure, but gentle enough to give the feeling of strolling loosely from topic to topic, and this procedure really suits the subject.

    Reply
  5. Gary Borck

    Extremely well written and beautifully executed. Rich with language and profound! I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.

    Reply
  6. Adam Sedia

    This was sheer pleasure to read, but in terms of its excellent craftsmanship, its delightful and often clever turn of phrasing (e.g. spell the Egyptian goddess as “Nuit”), but most of all for its sheer evocation of the magic and mystery of nighttime. As an inveterate night-owl I’ve often felt the same feelings this poem conjures magnificently. I also like the erotic language you use throughout the piece, which I think captures an inescapable aspect of the night.

    Reply
  7. C.B. Anderson

    A bit over-the-top perhaps, but nonetheless a compelling and numinous depiction of the dream world present even when we are awake.

    Reply

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