Let Evening Come
Let the light of late afternoon
shine through chinks in the barn, moving
up the bales as the sun moves down.
Let the cricket take up chafing
as a woman takes up her needles
and her yarn. Let evening come.
Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned
in long grass. Let the stars appear
and the moon disclose her silver horn.
Let the fox go back to its sandy den.
Let the wind die down. Let the shed
go black inside. Let evening come.
To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop
in the oats, to air in the lung
let evening come.
Let it come, as it will, and don’t
be afraid. God does not leave us
comfortless, so let evening come.
Notes
Earlier today, Rainer Maria Rilke's Autumn imagined a world in which everything is falling, held only by the possibility of an unseen tenderness. Jane Kenyon's Let Evening Come brings us somewhere quieter. Through fading light, ripening fruit, and the ordinary movements of rural life, she invites us to witness the arrival of darkness without trying to delay it. There is a remarkable gentleness in the way she allows the day to end. Perhaps our fear of endings comes from imagining that everything unfinished must somehow be a failure. We want more time, another conversation, another chance to become who we intended to be. Yet life rarely offers the satisfaction of completion. Sometimes acceptance begins when we stop demanding that it should. And so October's Decay comes to its close. We have spent this month among ruins, fading memories, fragile bodies, and the many things we cannot preserve. Kenyon leaves us with a different kind of courage, the willingness to let darkness arrive without surrendering our capacity for trust. The evening comes, as it always must, and there is still room for peace. #JaneKenyon #AmericanPoetry #ContemporaryPoetry #Existentialism #Impermanence
Jane Kenyon, “Let Evening Come” from Collected Poems. Copyright © 2005 by the Estate of Jane Kenyon