Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, IN THE DEEP MIDNIGHT, by CALE YOUNG RICE


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

IN THE DEEP MIDNIGHT, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Clanging, ever clanging
Last Line: All want that was is peace ... All clanging rest!
Subject(s): Bells; Life; Night; Railroads; Bedtime; Railways; Trains


I

Clanging, ever clanging!
Clanging in the deep midnight, train-bells clanging!
Over the city sleeping,
Over the silent huddle of roofs and shadows,
Over the hearts of thousands, lying enchambered, breathing evenly,
Or breathing and tossing to and fro, on torn seas of insomnia;
Clanging over the streets, restless clanging --
Over hushed streets, with blue electric lights lonesomely burning;
Over the steepled churches --
The shrines dark and empty save for the voiceless souls of Bibles;
Over the wan Hospital, the wards where the sick lie waking a little,
And where they moan a little, not knowing why;
Over the Jail, where the guilty, too, wake and stir in their ward,
And where they start, with waging blood, and moan and beat at their bars,
Because for them there is neither home nor highway;
Over that other prison, where the dead lie,
But wake not at all, nor struggle, nor beat at their bars!
Ever, ever clanging!

II

O voiceful restlessness!
Vibrant soul of the world's coming and going,
Resonant want of it, restive vent of it, and of desire, desire --
Desire to wander back to the peace of the known,
Or out and away to the anywhere of deliverance --
How many, a-dream, are caught in the net of your ringing!
How many turn in their sleep and are caught away to the sea's roaring,
Are caught away ... over corn tossing, and woods waving, and rivers,
Past the red-lit or the green-lit stations, clanging,
Away to the dark of the East or the dark of the West!
How many remember, far from mother or wife,
And wander if there is waking, if there is waiting,
If there are tears falling for them in the darkness!
How many, under your quaver, under your clamour and evocation,
See sudden again the far-aways of childhood,
Brought forth from the shadowy bournes of years and grief and blind forgetting,
To merge again in the mists of sleep's immuning!
How many, under your riot, under your plangence, under your passion,
Ride again over cattle-wilds, again over buttes and mesas,
Unlassoed still by Life, lords of its spaces, of its pastures!
How many, mated with sin, disease, and stagnance,
In dens, moonless and loveless, where the free sweet winds would sicken,
Feel, as they hear, the nails of their souls' coffin,
Driven, driven, driven, driven in!

III

It passes, as all passes; there is silence.
The huddled roofs dream again in the shadows,
With the blue electric lights lonesomely burning, the streets unbroken;
Night's immemorial opiate rules all.
And the stars come closer, beaten off no more by the sound's urgence,
Intimate now, and ready with revelations, with reachings;
For the sky has become the confessional of God,
And, Priest of the Universe, He hears its need -- and shrives it --
Till all the crying that was, now is comfort,
All want that was is peace ... all clanging rest!





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