Night Vision
By day give thanks, by night beware
Half the world in sweetness, the other in fear
When the darkness takes you, with her hand across your face
Don't give in too quickly, find the things she's erased
Find the line, find the shape through the grain
Find the outline and things will tell you their name
The table, the guitar, the empty glass
All will blend together when the daylight has passed
Find the line, find the shape through the grain
Find the outline and things will tell you their name
Now I watch you falling into sleep
Watch your fist uncurl against the sheet
Watch your lips fall open and your eyes dim
In blind faith
I would shelter you
And keep you in light
But I can only teach you
Night vision
Night vision
Night vision
Commentary
I like everyday poems. Of course, I also like love poems, and war poems, metaphysicals and the Movement, irreverent flights of whimsy and dense conglomerations of weighty syllables. But there’s a special place in my affections for poems that celebrate the simple, the ordinary, the casual - and which do so in such a manner as to offer a new way of seeing them.
Today’s poem is one such. Who hasn’t reflected on the way things look after the lights have been turned out? The strange shapes furniture and fabric take, the patterns of moonlight and shadow rippling across walls and floor, the reflected images in mirrors, the silhouettes of lamps and bookshelves and chairs and vases… at night, reality itself seems to ‘suffer a sea-change / into something rich and strange’1.
And Vega captures this. “Night vision” is a song2 that combines the magic of darkness with the tenderness and poetry of love, and it’s wonderfully, wonderfully done.
— Thomas
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From the Wondering Minstrels mailing list, 1999–2008.
Langmaid Nick · 6 November 2002
I found these lyrics very interesting, so I dug a little deeper.
The words are a loose translation of a work called “Juan Gris” by French poet Paul Eluard.
Juan Gris was a Spanish cubist painter who lived and worked in Paris in the early part of the twentieth century.
“Find the line, find the shape through the grain Find the outline and things will tell you their name”
It’s a nice commentary on the cubist style. These lines aren’t in Eluard’s poem (unless my French is much worse than I think it is!) so Suzanne has added them, closing the loop. Very tidy.
Nick.
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G & J Waters · 5 February 2003
I was listening to this song tonight, and I love it as a poem. For me, it’s also about our fear of the dark, and what parents (and anyone who loves someone, I suppose) want for their child (or beloved) - to keep them in light. But in this world this is not possible, so we try to teach “night vision” – how to make it through the “dark night of the soul,” when fear grips us and we feel as if we can’t continue, how the recognition of the familiar grounds us.
jwaters