Poem of the Week

Dean Rader has written, edited, or coedited eleven books, including the poetry collections Works & Days, which won the 2010 T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry, and Self-Portrait as Wikipedia Entry. He is a professor at the University of San Francisco.

Still Life with Gratitude

by Dean Rader
The heavens call to you and revolve about you,
showing to you their eternal beauties;
and your eye is still gazing upon the earth.

—Dante, Purgatorio


One day, the scientists tell us, every star in the universe
will burn out, the galaxies gradually blackening until

the last light flares and falls returning the all to darkness
where it will remain until the end of what we have come


to think of as time. But even in the dark, time would go on,
bold in its black cloak, no shade, no shadow,


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