Incandescence at Dusk - Edward Hirsch (Homage to Dionysius the Areopagite)

There is fire in everything,

shining and hidden—

Or so the saint believed. And I believe the saint:

Nothing stays the same

in the shimmering heat

Of dusk during Indian summer in the country.

Out here it is possible to perceive

That those brilliant red welts

slashed into the horizon

Are like a drunken whip

whistling across a horse’s back,

And that round ball flaring in the trees

Is like a coal sizzling

in the mouth of a desert prophet.

Be careful.

Someone has called the orange leaves

sweeping off the branches

The colorful palmprints of God

brushing against our faces.

Someone has called the banked piles

of twigs and twisted veins

The handprints of the underworld

Gathering at our ankles and burning

through the soles of our feet.

We have to bear the sunset deep inside us.

I don’t believe in ultimate things.

I don’t believe in the inextinguishable light

of the other world.

I don’t believe that we will be lifted up

and transfixed by radiance.

One incandescent dusky world is all there is.

But I like this vigilant saint

Who stood by the river at nightfall

And saw the angels descending

as burnished mirrors and fiery wheels,

As living creatures of fire,

as streams of white flame. . . .

1500 years in his wake,

I can almost imagine

his disappointment and joy

When the first cool wind

starts to rise on the prairie,

When the soothing blue rain begins

to fall out of the cerulean night.