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The Coming of Light

Even this late it happens:
the coming of love, the coming of light.
You wake and the candles are lit as if by themselves,
stars gather, dreams pour into your pillows,
sending up warm bouquets of air.
Even this late the bones of the body shine
and tomorrow’s dust flares into breath.

Notes

Strand strips away all poetic excess to capture a profound moment of stillness, where the simple, gathering illumination of the sky becomes a quiet salvation. It beautifully maps onto July’s philosophy of lightness, showing that we do not need to endlessly pursue meaning; rather, we must learn to patiently yield to the world as it unfolds. By focusing on how a single, fleeting dawn can completely unburden the mind of its overnight shadows, the poem reminds us that true clarity is not something we build, but something we gracefully let in. #poetry #markstrand #modernist #light #love

About the author

Mark Strand

Mark Strand was a Canadian-born American poet, essayist and translator. He was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1990 and received the Wallace Stevens Award in 2004. Strand was a professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University from 2005 until his death in 2014.