Let Evening Come

A Norwegian friend reminded me this morning of my love of Jane Kenyon's poetry, and how I wove it into my reflections about Sabbath when I spoke of Sabbath time and Sabbath touch to my colleagues, friends and patients at Modum Bad. I also had in mind the beauty of Gustav Vigeland's sculpture in Frogener Park: so many lovely portraits of life and love. 

Of Kenyon's poems I think my favorite, certainly the poem I invoke most often, is "Let Evening Come." The coming of evening, with its contrasting associations of homecoming and darkness descending, sunset and vespers, has always been a time of day I cherish, and sometimes, especially as a child, a time of day that evoked both excitement and fear, as who knew what the night would bring. 

 

Let Evening Come

by Jane Kenyon

 

Let the light of late afternoon

shine through chinks in the barn, moving   

up the bales as the sun moves down.

Let the cricket take up chafing   

as a woman takes up her needles   

and her yarn. Let evening come.

Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned   

in long grass. Let the stars appear

and the moon disclose her silver horn.

Let the fox go back to its sandy den.   

Let the wind die down. Let the shed   

go black inside. Let evening come.

To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop   

in the oats, to air in the lung   

let evening come.

Let it come, as it will, and don’t   

be afraid. God does not leave us   

comfortless, so let evening come.

 

 

 

Jane Kenyon, “Let Evening Come” from Collected Poems. Copyright © 2005 by the Estate of Jane Kenyon. Reprinted with the permission of Graywolf Press, St. Paul, Minnesota, www.graywolfpress.org.

 

 

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