"At Night" by Yone Noguchi

"At Night" 

A poem by Yone Noguchi

Image Credit: en.wikipedia.org

At night the Universe grows lean, sober- 

faced, of intoxication, 

The shadow of the half-sphere curtains 

down closely against my world, like a 

doorless cage, and the stillness chained by 

wrinkled darkness strains throughout the Uni- 

verse to be free. 

Listen, frogs in the pond, (the world is a pond itself) 

cry out for the light, for the truth! 

The curtains rattle ghostlily along, bloodily biting 

my soul, the winds knocking on my cabin door 

with their shadowy hands.

Yone Noguchi is the first Japanese-born writer to publish poetry in English. He was born in 1875 in Tsushima. His first collection, Seen & Unseen, Or, Monologues of a Homeless Snail (1897, 1920), was published in San Francisco by the editors of The Lark. Noguchi decided to travel to the United States while studying at Keio Gijuku. Noguchi published his first poems in a small San Francisco magazine called The Lark. He then went on to publish many articles and several books of poetry and prose. Nofuchi continued to publish extensively in English, establishing himself as a cross-cultural and transnational writer. He returned to Japan in 1905 and died in Toyooka-mura on July 13, 1947.

* This poem by Yone Noguchi is found in public domain.