Last Night Was the Longest of the Year

On Darkness

You darkness, that I come from,
I love you more than all the fires
that fence in the world,
for the fire makes
a circle of light for everyone,
and then no one outside learns of you.

But the darkness pulls in everything;
shapes and fires, animals and myself,
how easily it gathers them! --
powers and people --
and it is possible a great energy
is moving near me.

I have faith in nights.

-- Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Robert Bly