The Star-Bright Hour Poem by Betti Alver

The wind won't ask: to what did life amount?
To yourself you'll render your own account.

However long, however dark the night -
your forehead bears your name in plain sight.

Each leaf that sees the sunlight falls unknown
with all the rest. Yet each one falls alone.

No shining goal, no star to travel toward?
Go and see what is consumerism's reward.

Do you know how kindness grows, unseen and gentle?
Why cruel deeds are never accidental?
Why helmets rust unless they bloom and flower?
Why life can never repeat its star-bright hour?
Why tiny flames withstood the snowstorm's test
and flickered on within the human breast?

Go ask your betters, do their bidding.
Go ask the dead. And then go ask the living.

But never ask yesterday
for those who happened to stray
across the sandy marsh into pitch-black night.

It's all the same to them - was it spite
that made the boatman take his chance
without a light, or was it happenstance?