It is the wound in Time. The century’s tides, chanting their bitter psalms, cannot heal it. Not the war to end all wars; death’s birthing place; the earth nursing its ticking metal eggs, hatching new carnage. But how could you know, brave as belief as you boarded the boats, singing? The end of God in the poisonous, shrapnelled air. Poetry gargling its own blood. We sense it was love you gave your world for; the town squares silent, awaiting their cenotaphs. What happened next? War. And after that? War. And now? War. War. History might as well be water, chastising this shore; for we learn nothing from your endless sacrifice. Your faces drowning in the pages of the sea. Carol Ann Duffy, ‘The Wound in Time’ (2018)

War. And after that? War. And now? War. War.
History might as well be water, chastising this shore.

-Carol Ann Duffy, The Wound in Time, written on the occasion of the centenary of the first World War.
#everynightapoem

On the last day of the world
I would want to plant a tree

what for
not for the fruit

the tree that bears the fruit
is not the one that was planted

I want the tree that stands
in the earth for the first time

-WS Merwin, "Place"
#everynightapoem #fragment

Magnolias in bloom

From you have I been absent in the spring
—

They were but sweet, but figures of delight
Drawn after you, – you pattern of all those.
Yet seem’d it winter still, and, you away,
As with your shadow I with these did play.

-Shakespeare, Sonnet 98 (my favorite)
#everynightapoem #fragment

As Jimmy Boggs used to remind us, revolutions are made out of love for people and for place. He often talked about loving America enough to change it. 'I love this country,' he used to say, 'not only because my ancestors' blood is in the soil but because of what I believe it can become.' Love isn't just something you feel. It's something you do everyday when you go out and pick the paper and bottles scattered the night before on the corner, when you stop and talk to a neighbor, when you argue passionately for what you believe in with whoever will listen, when you call a friend to see how they're doing, when you write a letter to the newspaper, when you give a speech and give 'em hell, when you never stop believing that we can all be more than what we are. In other words, Love isn't about what we did yesterday; it's about what we do today and tomorrow and the day after. -Grace Lee Boggs, The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the Twenty-First Century (2011)

Black and white photo portrait of Grace Lee Boggs, by Robin Holland

"Love isn't just something you feel. It's something you do everyday...Love isn't about what we did yesterday; it's about what we do today and tomorrow and the day after."

-Grace Lee Boggs (1915-2015), The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the 21st Century
#everynightapoem #ofsorts

Mapplethorpe photo of a pair of entwined tulips

Folks, I'm telling you,
birthing is hard
and dying is mean–
so get yourself
a little loving
in between.

Langston Hughes, "Advice"
#everynightapoem #botd

[Robert Mapplethorpe, Tulip, 1985]

This morning there's snow everywhere. We remark on it. You tell me you didn't sleep well. I say I didn't either. You had a terrible night. 'Me too.' We're extraordinarily calm and tender with each other as if sensing the other's rickety state of mind. As if we knew what the other was feeling. We don't, of course. We never do. No matter. It's the tenderness I care about. That's the gift this morning that moves and holds me. Same as every morning. -Raymond Carver, from "The Gift"

This morning there’s snow everywhere.

——

As if we knew what the other was feeling. We don’t,

of course. We never do. No matter.

It’s the tenderness I care about.

-Raymond Carver, from "The Gift"
#everynightapoem #thismorning

In times of crisis, we must all decide again and again whom we love.

–Frank O’Hara, from Meditations in an Emergency (1957)
#everynightapoem #fragment

And winter sheds its grief in snow

-Emily Brontë, (borrowing the single line I like from her poem) “Sympathy”
#everynightapoem #fragment

"The children are always ours, every single one of them, all over the globe; and I am beginning to suspect that whoever is incapable of recognizing this may be incapable of morality."

-James Baldwin, from Notes on the House of Bondage (The Nation, 1980)
#everynightapoem #ofsorts

paperback of John Berger, Confabulations - white background, mushroom illustration. On piano.

“Sustained by what we have inherited from the past and what we witness, we will have the courage to resist and continue resisting in as yet unimaginable circumstances. We will learn how to wait in solidarity.”

-John Berger, Confabulations, "How to Resist A State of Forgetting"
#everynightapoem

a title page from Berger's Confabulations. "How to Resist A State of Forgetfulness"

"Those who are ready to protest against, and resist, what is happening today are legion, but the political means for doing so are for the moment unclear or absent.

How to wait in this state of forgetfulness?”

John Berger, from "Confabulations (2016), his final book
#everynightapoem #ofsorts

There are no boring people in this world. Each fate is like the history of a planet. And no two planets are alike at all. Each is distinct - you simply can't compare it. If someone lived without attracting notice and made a friend of their obscurity - then their uniqueness was precisely this. Their very plainness made them interesting. Each person has a world that's all their own. Each of those worlds must have its finest moment and each must have its hour of bitter torment - and yet, to us, both hours remain unknown. When people die, they do not die alone. They die along with their first kiss, first combat. They take away their first day in the snow ... All gone, all gone - there's just no way to stop it.

Each fate is like the history of a planet.

——
When people die, they do not die alone.
They die along with their first kiss,
first combat
They take away their first day in the snow

-Yevgeny Yevtushenko, “People”
trans. Boris Dralyuk @bdralyuk.bsky.social

#everynightapoem

“And now let us believe in a long year that is given to us, new, untouched, full of things that have never been, full of work that has never been done, full of tasks, claims, and demands; and let us see that we learn to take it without letting fall too much of what it has to bestow upon those who demand of it necessary, serious, and great things.“ Rainer Maria Rilke, in a letter to his wife, the sculptor Clara Rilke, on January 1, 1907 (Translated by Jane Bannard Greene and M.D. Herter Norton)

“And now let us believe in a long year that is given to us, new, untouched, full of things that have never been…”

Rainer Maria Rilke, in a letter to his wife, the sculptor Clara Rilke, on January 1, 1907
(Translated by Jane Bannard Greene and M.D. Herter Norton)
#everynightapoem #january

So much of any year is flammable

Naomi Shihab Nye, "Burning the Old Year"
#everynightapoem

Alfred, Lord Tennyson Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky, The flying cloud, the frosty light: The year is dying in the night; Ring out, wild bells, and let him die. Ring out the old, ring in the new, Ring, happy bells, across the snow: The year is going, let him go; Ring out the false, ring in the true. Ring out the grief that saps the mind For those that here we see no more; Ring out the feud of rich and poor, Ring in redress to all mankind. Ring out a slowly dying cause, And ancient forms of party strife; Ring in the nobler modes of life, With sweeter manners, purer laws. Ring out the want, the care, the sin, The faithless coldness of the times; Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes But ring the fuller minstrel in. Ring out false pride in place and blood, The civic slander and the spite; Ring in the love of truth and right, Ring in the common love of good. Ring out old shapes of foul disease; Ring out the narrowing lust of gold; Ring out the thousand wars of old, Ring in the thousand years of peace. Ring in the valiant man and free, The larger heart, the kindlier hand; Ring out the darkness of the land, Ring in the Christ that is to be.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

As ever - sharing Tennyson’s exhortation to leave the old year dying in the night.

In gratitude, fellow travelers. #everynightapoem

[Edvard Munch, Moonlight, 1895 @nasjonalmuseet] the moon in the night sky, reflected in a pillar of moonlight over water, foreground of trees and an undulating coastline

Dew whitens into frost from this night onward
The moon still shines brightest back home.

露從今夜白
月是故鄉明。

-Tu Fu (712-770), from 'Thinking of My Brothers on a Moonlit Night' 杜甫 月夜億舍弟
#everynightapoem #fragment #moon

[Edvard Munch, Moonlight, 1895 @nasjonalmuseet]

"Their bodies become where pain clings to so that fewer others will need to experience pain. I’d like to invite my readers to slow down, even just a little bit, and to care for others’ stories, especially the bodily ones." 3/3
-Yueqi Cheng (full text in screenshot at top of thread)
#everynightapoem

Stories are there, but they float, and only when one begins to listen, ask, and pay attention do they land. In an era governed by the tyranny of speed, stories are always afloat because few actually care about others’ stories, and the excuse is that they don’t have time. We are governed by speed because we allow speed to govern us. The cab driver’s father-in-law’s frostbites, just like nursing assistants’ body aches, are inconsequential for us and this world but are significant for them. They embody not only the pain of their bodies but the pain of this era. Their bodies become where pain clings to so that fewer others will need to experience pain. I’d like to invite my readers to slow down, even just a little bit, and to care for others’ stories, especially the bodily ones. Ethnography has an unforgiving quality to it because when you see people in the field, you can’t unsee them; when you hear someone’s stories, you can’t unhear them. Ethnography can never be tidy because it’s so close to an ever-messy, changing, and vibrant being that is life. To try to smooth out the ethnography is equivalent to leaving out the “unpretty” people and corners. I slowed down when faced with such “unprettiness” – I dwelled on it. This is my ethnographic responsibility – to not speed up when coming across the unprettiness but to stare right at it long and hard. from Yueqi Alex Cheng, "Reinventing Care: Nursing Assistants’ Embodied Resistance Working in Public Hospitals in Changsha, Hunan" for Graduate Liberal Studies at Duke University, December 2025.

Two committee members, Anne Whisnant and Eileen Chow, and a third, Ralph Litzinger, off camera, plus the new MA herself, Yueqi Cheng

Had our first graduate thesis defense of the academic year here at Duke - for Yueqi Chen's absolutely lyrical ethnography on nurses' aides working in public hospitals in Hunan, China.

Sharing, with permission, a beautiful passage from Yueqi's thesis which I found really moving:
#everynightapoem

Gustave Flaubert, Novembre (Verbe) - book cover with small etching of a tree in autumn rain

"Est-ce que, pour toi, les jours de soleil en hiver sont aussi tristes ? Quand il fait du brouillard, le soir, et que je marche seule, il me semble que la pluie traverse mon coeur et le fait tomber en débris."

-Gustave Flaubert, “Novembre" (1842)
#everynightapoem #ofsorts

puddles of water and fallen yellow leaves on a sidewalk in Durham, NC

Are the days of winter sunshine just as sad for you, too? When it is misty, in the evenings, and I am out walking by myself, it seems to me that the rain is falling through my heart and causing it to crumble into ruins.

-Gustave Flaubert, 'November' (trans. Andrew Brown)
#everynightapoem

What Kind of Times Are These by Adrienne Rich There's a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphill and the old revolutionary road breaks off into shadows near a meeting-house abandoned by the persecuted who disappeared into those shadows. I've walked there picking mushrooms at the edge of dread, but don't be fooled this isn't a Russian poem, this is not somewhere else but here, our country moving closer to its own truth and dread, its own ways of making people disappear. I won't tell you where the place is, the dark mesh of the woods meeting the unmarked strip of light— ghost-ridden crossroads, leafmold paradise: I know already who wants to buy it, sell it, make it disappear. And I won't tell you where it is, so why do I tell you anything? Because you still listen, because in times like these to have you listen at all, it's necessary to talk about trees.

this isn't a Russian poem, this is not somewhere else but here,
our country moving closer to its own truth and dread,
its own ways of making people disappear.

-Adrienne Rich, What Kind of Times Are These

#everynightapoem
it's necessary to talk about trees.

Full poem below. Image is my typing the poem out on a typewriter. The border is a line that birds cannot see. The border is a beautiful piece of paper folded carelessly in half. The border is where flint first met steel, starting a century of fires. The border is a belt that is too tight, holding things up but making it hard to breathe. The border is a rusted hinge that does not bend. The border is the blood clot in the river’s vein. The border says stop to the wind, but the wind speaks another language, and keeps going. The border is a brand, the “Double-X” of barbed wire scarred into the skin of so many. The border has always been a welcome stopping place but is now a stop sign, always red. The border is a jump rope still there even after the game is finished. The border is a real crack in an imaginary dam. The border used to be an actual place, but now, it is the act of a thousand imaginations. The border, the word border, sounds like order, but in this place they do not rhyme. The border is a handshake that becomes a squeezing contest. The border smells like cars at noon and wood smoke in the evening. The border is the place between the two pages in a book where the spine is bent too far. The border is two men in love with the same woman. The border is an equation in search of an equals sign. The border is the location of the factory where lightning and thunder are made. The border is “NoNo” The Clown, who can’t make anyone laugh. The border is a locked door that has been promoted. The border is a moat but without a castle on either side. The border has become Checkpoint Chale. The border is a place of plans constantly broken and repaired and broken. The border is mighty, but even the parting of the seas created a path, not a barrier. The border is a big, neat, clean, clear black line on a map that does not exist. The border is the line in new bifocals: below, small things get bigger; above, nothing changes. The border is a skunk with a white line down its bac…

The border is a rusted hinge that does not bend.

The border is the blood clot in the river’s vein.

The border is a handshake that becomes a squeezing contest.

-Alberto Ríos
from “The Border: A Double Sonnet” (2015)
#everynightapoem

THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM Kay Ryan The room is almost all elephant. Almost none of it isn't. Pretty much solid elephant. So there's no room to talk about it.

The room is
almost all
elephant.
Almost none
of it isn’t.
Pretty much
solid elephant.
So there’s no
room to talk
about it.

-Kay Ryan, “The Elephant in the Room”
#everynightapoem

My heart is not a stone. How to say "I would prefer not to," from three millenia ago. - image is a film still of two stones, from Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022) CHOWLEEN.SUBSTACK.COM

a new small post on 柏舟 ("Cypress Boat") from the Book of Songs (c 600 BCE).

My heart is not a mirror
To reflect what others will

My heart is not a stone
It cannot be rolled

My heart is not a mat
It cannot be folded away

我心匪鑑 不可以茹
我心匪石 不可轉也
我心匪席 不可卷也

#everynightapoem chowleen.substack.com

"Whom seeing not, we" clasp - Emily A remnant of a letter to Elizabeth Holland, in the Amherst Emily Dickinson Collection

“It is also November. The noons are more laconic and the sundowns sterner...November always seemed to me the Norway of the year.”

-Emily Dickinson, letter to Elizabeth Holland (Nov 1865)
#everynightapoem #november

ALL HALLOWS' EVE In the great silence of my favorite month, October—the red of maples, the bronze of oaks, clear-yellow leaves here and there on birches— I celebrated the standstill of time.. The vast country of the dead had its beginning everywhere: At the turn of a tree-lined alley, across park lawns. But I did not have to enter, I was not called yet. Motorboats pulled up on the riverbank, paths in pine needles. It was getting dark early, no lights on the other side. I was going to attend the ball of ghosts and witches. A delegation would appear there in masks and wigs, And dance, unrecognized, in the chorus of the living. —CZESLAW MILOSZ (Translated, from the Polish, by the author and Leonard Nathan.)

I was going to attend the ball of ghosts and witches,
A delegation would appear there in masks and wigs,
And dance, unrecognized, in the chorus of the living.

Czeslaw Milosz, All Hallow's Eve
#everynightapoem

Counterpoint, from W.H. Auden (1940)

The years shall run like rabbits,
For in my arms I hold
The Flower of the Ages,
And the first love of the world.

But all the clocks in the city
Began to whirr and chime:
'O let not Time deceive you,
You cannot conquer Time.

#everynightapoem #fragment

“The years like great black oxen tread the world,
and God the herdsman treads them on behind,
and I am broken by their passing feet.”

W. B. Yeats, from The Countess Cathleen, 1892
#everynightapoem #fragment

AMIT MAJMUDAR Invasive Species The bees are Africanized. All elm disease is Dutch. The carp is Asian, the python of the Everglades specifically Burmese. The plague bacillus sailed from India to Europe. Europe coughed khaki back at India. Everything is alien, especially star thistle with its spurs and bursts, unearthly, mapping its home galaxy like a foundling with a fleur-de-lys foot tattoo. Though even lilies hitchhike— every ditch lily was once a tiger lily, treasured in the garden of a Mughal. Everybody thinks the Mughals Indian, but Mughal comes from Mongol. Invaders make themselves at home and home remakes them into natives. Everybody comes from someplace else where they were royal refugees. We flower where we flower, flinging roots like ropes from runaway hot air balloons to snag a city's skyline. It never feels like an invasion when you're doing it. It feels like parenting, like cooking what you've always cooked, like dancing with your grandma at a noisy wedding But then you turn to see the horrified park rangers staring at you, calling in the experts-look at this, what do we do, they're everywhere. You wonder who they mean, but then you see. Their poison hemlock? That is you. Their brown tree snake. Their killer bee.

You wonder who they mean,
but then you see. Their poison hemlock? That
is you. Their brown tree snake. Their killer bee.

-Amit Majmudar, 'Invasive Species'
#everynightapoem
We flower where we flower.

GIOVANNI'S ROOM novel by James Baldwin I am the man. I suffered, I was there. Whitman.

I am the man. I suffered,
I was there.
-Whitman

In Baldwin’s hand, cover page for the manuscript of Giovanni’s Room
#everynightapoem