WE NEVER NOTICE

We never notice when the dark comes on, the earth

emptied of light each evening, even

under the beds.

Silently, behind each speck of dust,

it lifts the light out through the windows.

So too, in the shoe-closet, between the laces

and slender eyelets,

the hours darken. Glasses

are quietly drained to the bottom, you don’t even

recognize your own face in the mirror.

--Translated from the Norwegian by Robert Hedin

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From “The Roads Have Come to an End Now: Selected and Last Poems of Rolf Jacobsen” (Copper Canyon Press: 172 pp., $16 paper)