Working Outside At Night

Working Outside at Night


by Denis Johnson

The moon swells
and its yellow darkens
nearer the horizon
and soon all
the aluminum rooftops


shall appear, orange
and distinct beside
the orange sun,
while the diamond
flares in its vacuum


within. It is simple
to be with the shovel,
thoughtless, inhabited
by this divorce,
it is good


the luminous
machinery, silenced,
waits, nice
that the conveyor
belts choked with sand


convey nothing.
When I return home to
coffee at
7:45 the lithe
young girls will be going
to high school, pulling


to their mouths stark
cigarettes through
Arizona’s sunlight.
These last few months
have been awful, and when


around five the roosters
alone on neighboring
small farms begin
to scream like humans
my heart just lies down,
a stone.


Denis Johnson, “Working Outside at Night” from The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations Millennium General Assembly: Poems Collected and New.
Posted over on Poetry Foundation