by Michael Gessner
Tell me now at night the fog
did not roll in like distant nebulae,
surrounded the houses of the town,
hung itself about the mountain’s crown
like a lazy laureate, that it did not bring
out something in us all, a deeper sleep,
a restlessness, an interest, so many
drifted off, while others, a few,
wandered out into the mist, breathed it
in, spoke of it as if their breath
and the fog’s were intermixed,
each becoming the other’s own.