I seem to have written three poems that can take Twilight as their title and so, if they eventually appear anywhere together, they might be called I, II and III. And it isn't beyond possibility that there might be a IV or more. I don't know. How am I supposed to know.
But I abhor with the abhorence of a saint the idea of a 'sequence'. You've either got a set of related poems or you have a long poem in parts. A 'sequence' is the sort of thing a 'progressive' act from the early 1970's would try to sell their new LP on, as if it gave it some artistic integriry, or, more recently, what one or two contributors to the Poets on Fire Forum would say, which was, 'when I'm writing a sequence'.
Well, baby, save yourself the trouble. Don't.
Shakespeare's Sonnets, Paradise Lost, The Waste Land, et al. They weren't sequences. They were, respesctively, a collection, a long poem and a poem.
Oh, yes. Twilight III. Just one more poem I'd like to call Twilight, really.
Twilight
III
What is it that creeps through the dusk
with no destination or time
of arrival in mind. A
glass
is waiting to be filled. The air
depends upon us for the chill
we know in it. And every sound
becomes more local. Things nearby
are immanent until the stars,
timid at first, are confident
enough and grow. And so many
old absences distil themselves
into the rich velvet of wine,
the sordid bitterness of gin.
I know they’ll never find me here.
