Day Close
Turn and face the sunset if you dare.
Don’t look for play of light in air
Or one day’s death to usher in another yet
more fair.
Turn and see truth
Truth in all majesty
Unencumbered in strength
Strong over daily oppression – depression
Drawing and lifting besetting frustration
As cool of the evening
Lifts heat of the sunlight
And lulls in the coming
Of darkness the healer.
Turn, see a moment
Never repeated
Fixed in the day as the time of its
parting.
Fixed in all time as this day’s departing
Returning no more.
Turn, see peace
The sun and the earth and you
Bound by peace, that companionship not of
this world.
Trees wane and fade
The far hills stoop into nothingness
The grass lays back
Still tremor of cypress, awed at the
spectacle.
The sun,
The sun pours down his molten end
In a hazy hush at the rim of the world.
The clouds in turmoiled glory
In a silent impassioned ecstasy
Lie near my face.
Evening cool soothing the brow
Chilling the back’s sweat
Hair lifting
With the spirit of that frozen, fervent
flame.
Richard Morriss (Zimbabwe)
August 1961
