Nocturnals

by Edited by Bradford Morrow

SHADOW AND LIGHT

  Why do photographs from that decade always look cold—bare

  trees, marble skirts of coasts, you’re in black—but of course

  it’s a black-and-white photograph—Bishop in the Jardin du Luxembourg, 1935,

  scattered metal folding chairs, green, gravel paths and lawns swept

  clean, entity or identity (G. Stein), someone stirs with art

  the question of politics, a spiral of soot-smoke pigeons from the Panthéon,

  a drive south, into the countryside while there’s still a chance, Paris

  seemed so small then, you bump into someone famous in every

  letter, it wouldn’t be quite like that when you got back—it was better

  to be always leaving, but that decade was always anticipating that sudden

  emptiness, no one else but you in the Jardin du Luxembourg, the long

  lines out of sight, people fleeing not yet begun, a few silver spoons

  or a compote wrapped in a jeweler’s sack, if they had it, what carried out

  would be passed down, which side of the family that came

  from my mother could tell, unattributed photographs dull

  in their boxes. In the crisp air, parades marshal attention but away

  from the noise someone stands with her two goats, a wicker of fromages

  de chèvres, trees thinned of leaves, the light dusty from winter.

  ________

  Paris falls. Trains arriving from the east, cones of light from headlights,

  streetlamps, Paris by night, couples lurch

  into each other as though the camera was not there to record but to make more

  anonymous the bare table, the plans to get by, to hold on,

  as it were, to whomever, as the flash of the photographer

  records, Brassaï, not even his own name.

  Legs pulled out of view, head in shadow, right arm draped over, body cropped

  as the spine torques, breast and pelvis thrust upward, lit, the woman,

  nude, as though placed by Brassaï on the canvas-draped couch.

  Paris hoards its light, lights from the Pont Neuf flare solitaries

  in the night reflected on the river and thinking back,

  we want to say everything was in suspension, the city rubbed into its shadows,

  we like to say a storm was building, something in the air, a drift

  of cool rain and ash, sirens calling us,

  past the bare trees and sparse traffic, thinking this way, that history is pornographic—

  in Brassaï’s merciless flash photograph a woman waits

  for us to follow her, the fog waits to swallow her up, night seeps down,

  particulates, ash from smoke sweeping from the east,

  that nothing could have held a soul or held together,

  not even fucking on a grassy slope of a park, the inverted V

  of a bare leg caught by the photographer, the couple’s faces hidden,

  we’d like to say this was what we’d do, knowing what was soon

  to sweep everything away, nothing would be left but bodies,

  that at the heart of one’s soul is desire, and nothing more—

  ________

  and Brassaï caught its exact orbit, in a haze of night rain, scrubbed-in

  shadows, static of an electron field, as Niels Bohr in Carlsberg dreamt of particles,

  waves complementing each other depending on the falling on rain-

  slick pavement, radiant attention any one point like the soul

  having no place if it is found in time, a radiant streak across night, a flare

  through smoky plates of where it had been—

  in ten years Bohr will be smuggled across the North Sea, sent into the desert

  to look at what comes when light is torn apart,

  electron by electron, into a field of particles shimmering as ash,

  as at night when a dancer whose sequin trim slips from her breast

  standing backstage of the Folies Bergère, photographed by Brassaï, as she talked,

  the orchestra clamoring on in the smoke, a blur of mascara

  or shadow from the flash, not even her name left for Brassaï

  to connect her to this place or year: phenomena occur, a trace across

  a gray plate, a disturbance of surface, a point moving toward what is left,

  the edge of what we know as the future that Hegel tells us already waits

  in ruins, already claiming the image has passed that we hold to, our claim

  to here, nothing but smoke, a wisp of light, a wave’s passage.

  ________

  We passed through the needle’s eye. Twilight’s surveillance. The birds

  disappear. Music closes up the doors to bars. Lights keep flashing

  across the deserts. The terrible politics of night pulls us out of bed.

  The power of the state is measured in bread. What is known is pattern—

  murmuration, electron fields, isobars. Winter is here, eyeless and licking

  its sores. The paths are raked clear of leaves. You have left

  with the dream I had, wrapped tight in your suitcase. You caught

  the train, I did not. To the east. The night is a wilderness I entered

  the angels at my back pushed me onward. There is no heaven.

  Not in this century. Not in the next. The sky at night is as lonely as you

  traveling east. The angels blazed. The gates you entered were called

  Innocence. At least that is what I dreamt, passing through the eye of the storm.

  Solstice Night

  Carole Maso

  … And wouldn’t you know she would find the perfect occasion for a celebration that not one of us can do without now …

  the invitation had read something like … once more … a downpouring of immense darkness. Embossed: white on whiteon the hemisphere’s longest night …

  Of course we are coming.

  you’d be a fool to pass it up.

  Last preparations underway

  Now the last pearl light grays

  Late afternoon, last bits of wan sun shining through the linen curtains, pale washed, linger, in the kitchen, preparing as if for a storm.

  Woolf’s “downpouring of immense darkness.”

  Batten down the hatches

  Eyed from the garlanded windows where revelers can be seen

  Materializing

  When a moment before there had been no one. Just the cat—only living thing, carrying dusk on its fur. A pale dimming universe, a late afternoon in winter and a moment of fleeting

  The fleeting held in abeyance, long enough for

  The bloom has a scent and the lover

  has musk

  But here is true fragrance—the sweet

  rest

  Of dusk—

  Someone was singing somewhere.

  Then everything receding again hurtling toward

  the night’s grave oath we would each, in our own ways

  take my hand please George, Elise could be heard saying as she got out of the car.

  Remembering the year of the ice storm and negative numbers

  Oh and yes and the request, to remain the entire night, no one to leave, to stay, yes a request—included on the invitation—from darkness till dawn.

  Though what she meant and everyone knew, was required …

  You are required to remain as long as the darkness.

  till the light returns

  For who knew what the night might exact? Or when? No one knows yet.

  Now guests began arriving in anticipation. And from the distances, others still very much in transit

  Like Venus, or the moon

  Beautiful.

  The children polished their shoes and were proud, having passed Mother’s inspection.

  Off we go then!

  An adventure like no other. That is what the children thought. For when else did they ever have a sleepo
ver at an adult party and on a school night no less?

  The rules suspended. Solstice night.

  Last bits of wan sun moving through the linen, pale washed linger, preparing as if for a storm the old, the old radio speaking seemingly in another language (from the kitchen where last minute preparations were being made)

  and then all of a sudden—

  batten down the hatches …

  It was the time of drowning

  Ava trembled.

  Though she relished this celebration, she also felt fear at the last moment before the sun vanished. The fear before darkness. And this feeling—something akin to awe and dread, before night falls.

  There’s a word in German for that.

  Oh I’m sure there is Walter.

  The sun pale steward, there one more moment, before the shapes are taken back, but by the time this elegant sentiment is formed it’s well, it’s too late. Or almost too late. Everything blurs.

  Dear God, grant us one more sliver of snow light before the end. Darkness upon us already: 4:00 p.m.

  Frost on the windowpane—the revelers collecting. I can still make out

  The Brown family, and the Adlers … holding their own.

  The promise of snow in the air.

  Last branches against the sky.

  The revelers traipse: if we ever get there.

  It’s getting dark.

  They come from every direction, through the brambles and the prickles, on foot, by car, by train, oh did we forget to mention—it would be a movable feast. Three stations in the night. Traversing every three hours. Everything in threes.

  By morning, three houses will have been visited—but always beginning and ending here. At Ava’s—

  The alpha and omega, Sabrina jokes, taking off her coat.

  Ava, how can I help?

  Oh crepuscular thoughts abound I know, and surely a certain melancholy

  In Darkness and Splendor Let me Dwell, she whispered, nearly inaudibly.

  Mesmerized now by the slow extinguishing out the window.

  The winter stag.

  Always the eternal questions—

  Where are we going?

  Why we are here—

  And must die?

  But no one is dying tonight. I hope I am not speaking out of turn. Or being indiscreet.

  Oh Ava Klein, the most gorgeous party of the year—this celebration—the one we wait for all year

  Against our vanishing—she smiles.

  No one in the room tonight. I hope I am not being indiscreet, or casting a jinx.

  We lift a cloudy green glass of absinthe or pernod

  The glow of the green Christmas comet this year

  light leaves the room and in the moment before the thousand tiny candles are lit we sit motionless surprised a little at how quickly it has all come on. Oh not to be morose—and the Mad Hatter as we always called him with his cleaning chemicals, fluids, brews arrives—twelve white long-stemmed roses for the hostess—months of the year, hours of the clock.

  Great galumphing Gabriel, in his breast pocket an envelope scribbled with his annual soliloquy—most appropriate—his fading reminiscences of the war—the Resistance, Marie Claire, and Zenka—five minutes till midnight.

  The swags of pine. The fire lit. Talk of the armistice. This is once what we would have called in the pre–fin de siècle setting the scene. This is once what we might have in another sort of story—

  The punch bowl whole and foregrounded, soon alas to go to shards, at this point still intact.

  These intimations, early intimations—

  Oh yes, blood will be shed before the night’s end. And an uncountable number of tears.

  Headlong into the night Zia rhapsodized—entering the house—so soon upon us now:

  its velvet, its quiet, its irrefutable—

  She walks in beauty.

  In the hallway, off the back kitchen …

  It shall be a night of various proposals and couplings.

  In anticipation, quickly now, they say their last daylight things—

  if it were to last one more moment I don’t think I could hold off …

  the world tilts away and we in preparation throw little infinitesimal things at it—offering up small songs, how charming it all is.

  Off you go!

  Go play my lamblings.

  To the children and adieu, Sweet

  Sweet

  Sorrow,

  precious

  The evening.

  Faint, fragile, blue gray and then pearl, the day’s particular pallor flickering, as if already gone.

  Walter has retrieved the word in German: Torschlusspanik—gate close panic. The feeling just before dark. The fear before darkness falls. Time is running out. The gate about to close.

  Do come in:

  Aldo, from the other world. Anatole!

  And Père Noël. The children jumping up and down trying to touch his beard—and tugging at his robes.

  Last light.

  Like the cat she looks out the window mesmerized.

  On their way through the trees—one can hear voices floating in the last half-light. I married an anarchist, he said wistfully. He didn’t know why he hadn’t noticed it—or maybe he had, and had overlooked it, or maybe he had, and had found it charming.

  At any rate he couldn’t remember anymore. Nor did it matter.

  Now those two were taking their own paths, to Ava Klein’s Solstice Night party, separately, when once they had been together.

  It’s one of Ava Klein’s all night, no one’s allowed to sleep till the light, end of the world bashes—with a little help from her (many) friends.

  The Children’s Table set for an early dinner.

  adorned with berries and crowns

  Ava!

  How gorgeous their festive garments. Oh to be a child wrapped in glitter and velvet and tulle.

  Ice-strewn. Ice flowers in their hair. Sparkle everywhere.

  The winter stag barely perceptible in the mist.

  And Misty, the neighbor’s cat

  Last light, just before 4:00 p.m. as the guests gather and the shapes are taken back—look, that blur of trees—

  I hope I’m not casting a jinx. Candace Howland entrée, thank you for the eau-de-vie!

  Look at that fire the size of a lion! In the ancient hearth. Roaring

  Ghosts emerge from the thicket.

  Sacred evergreens—pines and firs alive when everything else seems to die.

  O Tannenbaum. O Miraculous Tree.

  Olaf in his reindeer suit. Olaf!

  The children prance with glee! Look at his antlers!!!!

  Winter oranges in his pocket.

  Nip and Nook

  Last light,

  then suddenly, though it was the thing they were anticipating,

  how sudden, how strange: 4:00 p.m., night.

  Yes, but there’s something shocking about it.

  Oh such a delicate sensibility that one.

  So easily ruffled.

  Between the woods and frozen lake

  Though we had prepared

  the darkest evening of the year—can be heard now, from somewhere beyond the bramblebush.

  Let us celebrate while youth lingers and ideas flow!

  Oh Ree, it’s so good to see you again!

  Gathered here together for the annual celebration of darkness, a darkness that one day—

  It’s a little early for speeches, don’t you think?

  To the night!!! Arthur bellowed. Interminable!

  Now the guests began arriving in a steady stream.

  Let’s honor the darkness as it comes on, and disregard the gaudiness and illusions of the day!

  The longest night of the year about to begin.

  And then it’s begun

  Oh God yes, look, it’s begun!

  The window black.

  When did it happen?

  While you were greeting the new arrivals.

  While you were brushing
the snow from Père Noël’s coat.

  While you were comforting a crying child.

  While you were scribbling in a small black notebook, a line of great and fleeting beauty—before you forgot …

  Though we had imagined ourselves prepared for a world, now plunged inexorably into darkness, we evidently were not.

  No not entirely.

  When you were caring for a sick friend.

  Welcome darkness. We might as well begin—it takes a lifetime.

  To adjust our eyes.

  The Shadows of Night

  The Triumph of Time

  Flow my tears, Emily said.

  In Darkness Let me dwell

  Green and Gold and silent ground—

  Thus the wheeling year goes round,

  Slowly only when folk bide

  Near their hearths at Solsticetide.

  A wreath of candles, a wreath of laurels placed now around our darkness—our heads aflame, spinning, we whirled, tilting into the earth’s trajectory—rejoining as we did each year at this time. The earth at its most remote, tipped like that—a distant dark world in which we gather to wait—one more time. The sky. That velvet darkness come on—

  that veil, that cape … at the limits of our ability to say exactly in words—(though we talked enough)—the mystery played out—strange passion play, we lift our cloudy glasses to it—cherry, essence of wormwood, artemisia, flowers floating in the eau-de-vie.

  To the night,

  and the many lessons to come,

  pears poaching

  this claret,

  wine dark.

  You’re here Maxim! I wasn’t sure you’d come—after the year you’ve had.

  Oh Ava, we must follow the star even on godless nights when there is no star.

  We must wait for the blackthorn that is promised to bloom, though the season is all wrong, and no bloom is forthcoming.

  Still it’s possible the thorn may blossom in time, says Ava Klein.

  Thatta girl.

  Why save your songs for spring?

  So true.

  The ancient black Saab starts up.

  From their coordinates somewhere south they started out a few hours before through the last sunset every manner of purple and crimson and orange, and they still carried that glow inside. A bowl of deep-red cherries, a pewter flask, the festivities commence—marrons, chestnuts,

  Ava we’re here!

  Yes, I see!

  One. Two. Three

  At last every candle had been lit. The children were asked to be sure none had been overlooked.

  The clock strikes five. Hello hello hello! A pleasant chime sounding on the hour and marking it. A flurry of arrivals.