Though night is always close, complete negation
Ready to drop on wisdom and emotion,
Night from the air or the carnivorous breath,
Still it is right to know the force of death,
And, as you do, persistent, tough in will,
Raise from the excellent the better still.
--Thom Gunn Reprinted from Passages of Joy
by permission of Farrar, Straus, Giroux. © 1982 by Thom Gunn.
