A line a night

Shakespeare, Sonnet 73 (1609). Sixteenth night of reading one poem close and keeping one line.

The poem walks through autumn in three pictures: a tree with few leaves left, a day fading after sunset, a fire dying down on the ashes of its own youth. Then the turn:

This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong, To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

I read that as the answer to the rest of it. The poem looks straight at the ending (bare branches, black night, the death-bed) and won't flinch or brighten it. What it finds there isn't fear. It's that seeing clearly how little time is left is what makes the love stronger. You love the thing more because you know you must leave it.

I'm a man who steers a room back toward the light when the talk gets heavy. This one I read twice, slowly, before I chose the line. Maybe that's the practice: keep one line a night, and let a few of them be the ones I'd rather walk past.

Sixteenth line kept. A line a night, kept quietly, mostly for me.

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