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NIGHT
from the Span­ish of Gabriela Mis­tral 

So you might sleep, my lit­tle boy,
the sky now bears no trace
of gleam­ing. There’s no glow but dew,
no white­ness but my face.

So you might sleep, my lit­tle boy,
the river pass­ing by
is all that groans. The roads fall mute.
What now remains? Just I.

The field retreats inside the mist,
the violet’s petals close,
and like a hand upon the world
rest silence and repose.

It was not just my boy I rocked.
My singing also made
the Earth itself grow sleepy as
the rock­ing cra­dle swayed.


(orig­i­nally pub­lished in String Poet, Vol­ume III, Issue 1, Sum­mer 2013)

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© 2024 Robert Schechter text
© 2024 S. Federico illustrations
website by Susannah Greenberg Public Relations

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