Call of the Night by Djuna Barnes

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend February 28, 2016   Call of the Night   Djuna Barnes

Dark, and the wind-blurred pines,             With a glimmer of light between. Then I, entombed for an hourless night             With the world of things unseen.   Mist, the dust of flowers,             Leagues, heavy with promise of snow, And a beckoning road 'twixt vale and hill,             With the lure that all must know.   A light, my window’s gleam,             Soft, flaring its squares of red— I loose the ache of the wilderness             And long for the fire instead.   You too know, old fellow?             Then, lift your head and bark. It’s just the call of the lonesome place,             The winds and the housing dark.            This poem is in the public domain. About This Poem   “Call of the Night ” was published in Harper’s Weekly on December 23, 1911. It appears in Barnes’s Collected Poems: With Notes Toward the Memoirs (University of Wisconsin Press, 2005).   Djuna Barnes was born in Cornwall-on-Hudson, New York, on June 12, 1892. She was a poet, novelist, playwright, journalist, and visual artist, as well as an important figure in the Modernist movement. Her works include Ryder (Horace Liveright, 1928) and Nightwood (Harcourt Trade Publishers, 1937). Barnes died in New York City on June 18, 1982. Poetry by Barnes   The Book of Repulsive Women and other poems (Carcanet Press, 2006) "Stanzas in Meditation" by Gertrude Stein "Stars Wheel in Purple" by H. D. "The Plain Sense of Things" by Wallace Stevens Poem-a-Day   Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-a-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038