Night Vision -- Suzanne Vega

(Poem #885) Night Vision By day give thanks, by night beware Half the world in sweetness, the other in fear When the darkness takes you, with her hand across your face Don't give in too quickly, find the things she's erased Find the line, find the shape through the grain Find the outline and things will tell you their name The table, the guitar, the empty glass All will blend together when the daylight has passed Find the line, find the shape through the grain Find the outline and things will tell you their name Now I watch you falling into sleep Watch your fist uncurl against the sheet Watch your lips fall open and your eyes dim In blind faith I would shelter you And keep you in light But I can only teach you Night vision Night vision Night vision -- Suzanne Vega

I like everyday poems. Of course, I also like love poems, and war poems,
metaphysicals and the Movement, irreverent flights of whimsy and dense
conglomerations of weighty syllables. But there's a special place in my
affections for poems that celebrate the simple, the ordinary, the casual -
and which do so in such a manner as to offer a new way of seeing them.

Today's poem is one such. Who hasn't reflected on the way things look after
the lights have been turned out? The strange shapes furniture and fabric
take, the patterns of moonlight and shadow rippling across walls and floor,
the reflected images in mirrors, the silhouettes of lamps and bookshelves
and chairs and vases... at night, reality itself seems to 'suffer a
sea-change / into something rich and strange' [1].

And Vega captures this. "Night vision" is a song [2] that combines the magic
of darkness with the tenderness and poetry of love, and it's wonderfully,
wonderfully done.

thomas.

[1] Shakespeare, "The Tempest". See poem #16
[2] It's on her utterly brilliant (and surprisingly little known) second
album, "Solitude Standing", released in 1987.