Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

MISERABLE NIGHT by AVENELLE WILMETH BLAIR

First Line: IT IS RAINING TONIGHT
Last Line: GOD, HOW THE PATIENTS COUGH!
Subject(s): HOSPITALS; RAIN; THEATER & THEATERS; STAGE LIFE;
It is raining tonight,
And full-leafed limbs shiver and whisper
As tears slip noiselessly down dark bodies of trees
And trickle cold upon their toes
In soliloquized dark.

Chilled cattle huddle in drowsy clumps
Beneath low-shingled sheds,
And listen to the close crunching of hard corn
Stabled horses eat.

Departing theatre guests duck to awninged shelter
Of dark closed doorways, await late taxis glumly,
And, wiping their wet noses,
Drive, spattering, homeward.

Night nurses sink deeper into wool sweaters,
Collars high, and shift miserable through sanatorium halls
Where shaded bulbs lend sickly light.
God, how the patients cough!



Home: PoetryExplorer.net