My father could hear a little animal step,
or a moth in the dark against the screen,
and every far sound called the listening out
into places where the rest of us had never been.More spoke to him from the soft wild night
than came to our porch for us on the wind;
we would watch him look up and his face go keen
till the walls of the world flared, widened.My father heard so much that we still stand
inviting the quiet by turning the face,
waiting for a time when something in the night
will touch us too from that other place.
and every far sound called the listening out
into places where the rest of us had never been.More spoke to him from the soft wild night
than came to our porch for us on the wind;
we would watch him look up and his face go keen
till the walls of the world flared, widened.My father heard so much that we still stand
inviting the quiet by turning the face,
waiting for a time when something in the night
will touch us too from that other place.
art by Mark Rothko
I
In my room, the world is beyond my understanding;
But when I walk I see that it consists of three or four
hills and a cloud.
II
From my balcony, I survey the yellow air,
Reading where I have written,
“The spring is like a belle undressing.”
III
The gold tree is blue,
The singer has pulled his cloak over his head.
The moon is in the folds of the cloak.
poem by Wallace Stevens / art by Danielle van Ark
Monks & Mannequins 