Hermit with Landscape

The winning volume in the 1989 Yale Series of Younger Poets competition is Hermit with Landscape by Daniel Hall. As James Merrill, distinguished poet and judge of the competition, has said: “Daniel Hall is a patient craftsman, a weigher of each word. Smaller and more lucid than their model, his imitations of life place no burden upon us; rather, their deftness lightens our step. Here mind once again outdances the monumental.”
 
Tidal
 
A moth hove out of fog. All I heard
was the incessant dissolving
of the surf, attenuated, drawn
through eggshell, bone and ash
as through the walls of another room.
 
After dark, before a glass,
in a hall reeling with shadows,
a pair of eyes resolved. At last
they shone: they shone
like phosphorescent moons.