Let Evening Come
One of the things that most defines good poetry for me is what I would call its “evocativeness.” Does the poet not just describe a setting but evoke a feeling, a memory, a sensory reaction? Jane Kenyon absolutely does that in her poem “Let Evening Come.” Whether you grew up in a rural setting or not, it’s hard not to identify with the slow movement of the afternoon sun or the chirp of a cricket or the discarded bottle at the side of the road. And in identifying with these images we remember a certain feeling, a certain inevitability about the passage of time caught each and every day as the sun drops toward the horizon, darkness gathers, and another day dies.
Kenyon, who struggled with depression much of her life and leukemia as an adult, knew something about the inevitability of darkness. But she also knew something about the resiliency of hope, the hope that springs from the simple promise that we are not alone, that “God has not left us comfortless.”
It is, I think, a bittersweet poem, evincing at most a somewhat subtle faith, and filled by what I would describe as a courageous resignation. There is no triumph here, no promise of rescue or relief; but neither are we left to face the shadows alone. What comes may not be easy, but we need face it neither on our own nor without at least a modicum of hope.
That may not seem like much. But some days, it’s all there is and, more often than not in my experience, it is enough.
Let Evening Come
Let the light of late afternoon
shine through chinks in the barn, moving
up the bales as the sun moves down.
Let the cricket take up chafing
as a woman takes up her needles
and her yarn. Let evening come.
Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned
in long grass. Let the stars appear
and the moon disclose her silver horn.
Let the fox go back to its sandy den.
Let the wind die down. Let the shed
go black inside. Let evening come.
To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop
in the oats, to air in the lung
let evening come.
Let it come, as it will, and don’t
be afraid. God does not leave us
comfortless, so let evening come.
Jane Kenyon’s “Let Evening Come,” published originally in the book by that name in 1990, can be found in Collected Poems
I read this poem at my wife’s memorial service in December 2011. She was raised in rural nw Ohio and was well acquainted with the images in Jane’s poem. In ways I don’t fully understand this poem comforts me to this day because I am deeply aware of Gods comfort in my own heart and I know with certainty that Margie is in the constant presence of the Comforter. Thank you for posting Let Evening Come and for your understandings of this beautiful poem.
This poem was “given to me” when my husband was dying of lung cancer. I found it in a book of poems sent by a close friend. My husband had been a farmer.
It was read both at his funeal and his mémorial service.
It helped my so much to accept what was happening.
The great poet Donald Hall passed away on 23 June 2018 at the age of 89. Donald was married to Jane Kenyon and deeply loved her as one sees in the many poems he wrote during her leukemia illness and after her death.
I hope someone has read “Let Evening Come” at his funeral, for I am certain that Jane would have were she still alive.