The first lines of this poem came to me in the night—those strange hours when thought and dream pass like shadows through the mind. I awoke briefly, not fully, and the phrase lingered: between and betwixt dawn and dusk… and the inverse, between and betwixt dusk and dawn. I held onto it until morning, when I set it down in full light. The poem that followed is a meditation on those intervals—the thresholds of consciousness and the veils through which the soul moves in its waking and its dreaming.
What begins as a reflection on the daily arc—from sunrise to sunset—soon turns inward, toward the more uncertain passage between dusk and dawn, where memory, time, and identity unravel and reweave. The Heraclitean epigraph provides the key: “The waking have one common world, but the sleeping turn aside each into a world of his own.” Yet even that distinction, perhaps, is not so firm as it seems.
The accompanying painting—Whistler’s Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket—mirrors the poem’s atmosphere: its drift between form and dissolution, its reverent wondering, its silence punctuated by brief illumination. Together, word and image ask not what life is, but whether it is lived or dreamed—and what remains of us in either case.
James McNeill Whistler, Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket c. 1872–1877 | Oil on canvas, 60.3 × 46.6 cm Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit
Betwixt the Spheres
by Donald S. Yarab
“The waking have one common world, but the sleeping turn aside each into a world of his own.” —Heraclitus, Fragment 89
Betwixt the dawn’s gold-burnished, trembling rise, And evening’s hush where embered echoes gleam, A soul drifts outward under waking skies— Or inward, through the latticework of dream.
Morning declares the world as firm and real, Noon lays its claim in certainties and fire, Yet twilight draws the veil we cannot feel, And sings the hush of unfulfilled desire.
The hours fall like leaves from unseen trees, Their passage soft, impermanent, and strange. Some name it life, who walk it by degrees— While others call it dream, and feel no change.
So tell me, when the final light has flown, And silence hangs, unbroken and immense— Was it a road we walked, and called our own, Or but a fleeting spark in dream’s pretense?
But what of time when sun has slipped from sight, And stars drift forth like seeds of the unknown? What voice is heard within the hush of night, When all the world lies still, and we—alone?
Between and betwixt the dusk and morning’s grace, A different kind of being comes to bloom: Where shadows speak, and time forgets its place, And long-dead voices gather in the gloom.
In sleep, the veil grows thin, the borders bend, And hours bleed into realms that none can chart. The soul recalls what lies beyond the end, And bears the hush of ages in its heart.
These hours are not lost—they are the deep, The ocean floor where buried visions gleam. From them we rise, like wanderers from sleep, Still marked by fire, still echoing the dream.
So stands the soul, on thresholds vast and wide, Between and betwixt the turning of the spheres— What seemed a life, a dream walks at its side, Measured not in hours, but in wonder—and in tears.
History shows that evil rarely marches under banners we immediately recognize. Too often, it comes draped in righteousness, purity, and fear. This piece is a lament for how easily we have been—and still can be—drawn into the machinery of cruelty.
My Friend, You Were There
My friend, When the Holy Catholic Church, seeking to preserve the Faith in all its radiant purity, instituted the Inquisition, you were there— not as a bystander, but as a willing voice.
You denounced the old widow, who lived alone with her cat. You whispered against the Jewish family— familiar, yet forever marked as other— and gave your assent to their undoing.
You crowded into the square to watch the trials. You sang hymns as the flames crowned their bodies with smoke. You wept tears of joy that the world was made purer that day.
My friend, When the ships came heavy with human cargo, and the auction blocks stained the soil, you were there.
You placed your bids. You weighed their flesh. You wrote the laws that chained their children.
You sang hymns on Sunday, and broke their backs on Monday. You called it providence. You called it order.
My friend, When the traders came with flags and rifles, when the rivers flowed with rubber and blood, you were there.
You signed the charters. You counted the profits. You sold the shackles and the scales.
You called it commerce. You called it destiny.
My friend, When the banners of the Reich unfurled, and the drums of destiny beat their hollow call, you were there.
You shouted with the crowds as glass shattered from shopfronts. You signed the letters, you cheered the laws, you raised your hand high in salute.
You bought the house, the shop, the art your neighbors were forced to leave behind.
You praised the strong hand that swept away the weak. You rejoiced as neighbors vanished, grateful that your streets were made clean.
My friend, When Stalin summoned the will of the people to root out the enemy within, you were there.
You reported the whispered doubts of your cousin, your friend, your brother.
You paraded with red flags while the trucks rumbled into the night. You filled the quotas. You seized the land. You counted the spoils as others disappeared.
You sang of the bright tomorrow as you cast your eyes down and stepped over the absent.
My friend, When Mao lifted the Little Red Book, and the children cried out against their fathers, you were there.
You led the chants. You scrawled denunciations across the walls. You struck the old professor who dared to hesitate. You cheered as the temples fell, and the old poems burned, convinced you were building a paradise on the bones of the past.
My friend, When Pol Pot promised that the fields would bloom with new life, you were there.
You marched the teachers into the paddies. You pointed the rifle. You praised the year zero that would erase the memory of all that came before.
You smiled as the world was reborn in silence.
My friend, When the generals rose in the name of order, when the prisons filled and the stadiums overflowed, you were there.
You nodded at the names. You counted the profits. You watched the blindfolded taken at night.
You called it security. You called it salvation.
My friend, You have always been there.
Only too late did you realize. Only too late did you doubt— but not much.
You fell silent, lest you betray your doubt. You looked away, lest you see.
You told yourself it would be different this time. You told yourself you had learned. But the signs are familiar. The words are familiar. The silence is familiar.
“Il faut imaginer Sisyphe heureux.” (“One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”) —Albert Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe (1942)
But perhaps he was mistaken. Perhaps the truth is simpler: When the stone is gone, the man remains.
Sisyphus Undone; or, It Was Tuesday
by Donald S. Yarab
He rose, as ever, with the morning’s breath, the hill still steep, the silence oddly wide. No stone to greet him with its weight or will— no groan of earth, no task to be defied.
The gods were gone. Their laughter had grown faint, or else the air refused to carry sound. The path he wore through centuries lay bare, a scar now healing into senseless ground.
He searched for signs: a crack, a trace, a mark, but found no proof that toil had ever been. His hands, once strong with strain, now idle hung, still shaped by burdens long dissolved within.
He sat. The dust rose lightly at his knee. A lark began to sing, then flew away. The sky, untroubled, held no word for him. The world had turned. It was another day.
What is the self when labor fades to wind? What is the myth once struggle slips its chain? He breathed. No answer stirred the lucid air. The hill was whole. The man was left, and plain.
The vague glimmer of a head suspended in space (1891, Lithograph) Odilon Redon (1840–1916)
I Am Undone
I.
It came not with fury, nor with fire. Not a blow, but a breath withheld. A stillness uncoiling in the spine. I did not cry out. I did not fall. I said only—I am undone. And the words were true, though I did not yet know how much they would mean.
II.
The star chart curled into ash. Landmarks dimmed, receded, folded into fog. I had names once— for the road, the self, the longing. They rusted in my mouth. I said again, am I— but the word faltered. Was I I? Was am still? Was undone the end, or only a door swinging inward with no floor?
III.
I wandered, perhaps. Or stood still and the world wandered past. The days no longer linked. Events occurred—but not to me. Faces mouthed shapes I could not hear or remember. I touched a wall that had always been there. It crumbled under my hand. I called it home, or meant to. Or once had. I think.
Un—done—I am—undone am I— I am…am I…?
IV.
And the past… no, the shape before the past— was it mine? Or borrowed from the eyes of others? Their eyes are gone. The mirror does not answer. I meant to say a thing— some thing— a small thing— but the mouth no longer forms what the mind no longer sends.
There is no forward. There is no back. There is no—
(nois)
V. Dissolution
I think I said—I was— no. I had said. Once.
Undone. It was the word. I said it. Before. Or after. I do not—
No shape to the day. No frame to the thought. They come—go— without edge.
The name of the thing was… not there. And the word for that— what was the word? The word is gone. The knowing is not.
“Ponder, O Morpheus, the Night Sky” arose from a meditation on the nature of dreams, consciousness, and the silent mysteries that lie beyond both. Rather than seeking to instruct, this poetic work offers a dialogue — between mortal longing and divine wonder, between question and silence. In addressing Morpheus, the god of dreams, the poem invites not sleep, but contemplation: a shared pondering of the night sky, where the known fades into the unknown, and where even gods may pause in awe before the infinite. It is my hope that this work may serve as a quiet companion for those who have found themselves, at least once, standing beneath the stars, asking questions for which no easy answers are given — and finding, in the asking, a kind of sacred beginning.
Sleep by Jean Bernard Restout (c. 1771). Oil on canvas, 129.5 x 96.5 cm (38 x 51 in). Cleveland Museum of Art. Depicting Morpheus
Ponder, O Morpheus, the Night Sky
“Beyond dreams lies a silence where even gods wonder.”
Prelude: The Summoning of Morpheus
Morpheus, Keeper of the Silent Looms, hear now the summons not of those who seek forgetfulness, nor of those who plead for soft illusions to cradle their weary minds— but of one who, standing alone beneath the immeasurable firmament, dares to bid thee ponder.
Ponder, thou Weaver of Shadows, the night sky: the endless, ink-deep vault where Orion’s belt cinches the waist of darkness, where scattered fires—blue, white, and ancient red— whisper of secrets too vast for mortal tongues.
Not for dreams of idle comfort do I call thee forth, but for contemplation; to set aside for a moment thy ceaseless crafting of mortal visions and lift thine ancient gaze upward, where the silent percussion of dying stars beats out the hidden music of creation.
For if thou, master of phantoms and bringer of luminous memories, shouldst pause to wonder at that boundless mystery, then perhaps the soul of man, frail and flickering though it be, might dare likewise to ask:
Who dreams the dreamers, O Morpheus? Whence come the visions thou bestowest? And what lies beyond the last dream, beyond the last star, beyond the last breath of sleep?
Thus the greater query is born, trembling on the tongue of the sleepless, yearning toward the silence that gathers all speech.
The Greater Query: A Dialogue with Morpheus
Soul: If thou, O Shaper of Phantoms, canst be stilled by wonder, then hear the questions borne upon my waking breath, fragile as they are, yet earnest as the stars are ancient:
Who first whispered the dream into being, before ever thou didst fashion it? From what unseen wellspring do the rivers of vision flow? Are the dreams of men but fractured echoes of a deeper song, or do they weave even now the hidden fabric of worlds yet unborn?
Morpheus (in thought): Dreams are the trembling of the soul against the veil of the infinite. They are not born of my will alone, Seeker, but arise from the deep soil where memory, longing, and the first light entwine. I but give them form; I do not summon them from the abyss. Some dreams, frail though they seem, stitch the very edges of what is to be. Mortals, in dreaming, unknowingly shape the unborn dawn.
Soul: Is it given to us—dust briefly animated, clay granted momentary breath— to pierce that veil? Or must we first unmake ourselves, falling through forgetting, to be remembered by the nameless light?
Morpheus: Beyond all dreams there is a silence older than stars and deeper than death. A silence not of absence, but of fullness, where neither waking nor sleeping holds dominion, and the soul, naked and unafraid, beholds itself as it was before all weaving began.
There the true Dreamer dwells— not I, but He whom none can name, the source of all dreams, the end of all seeking, the unspoken, the unseen.
Soul: And if we seek it, do we not risk all—memory, longing, even self itself?
Morpheus: It is the risk of being lost to be found, the surrender of knowledge to come to knowing. To seek the Silent One is to set sail upon a sea without stars, to abandon the safe shores of image and name, to become at last what thou hast always been: a breath upon the waters of infinity.
Ponder well, O Seeker, for in the seeking, thou thyself becomest the dream, the dreamer, and the silence beyond.
The Blessing of Morpheus: The Sending Forth
Morpheus: Go forth, Child of Earth and Stars, go forth lightly, as one who walks upon waters not yet created. Carry no burden save the yearning that kindled thy question; bind no certainty to thy brow, nor shelter fear within thy breast.
Let dreams fall from thee like withered leaves; let even the constellations become but distant embers, for thou seekest now what neither dream nor waking thought can compass.
Take not with thee the names men have carved into the bones of the world, for names shatter against the face of the nameless. Take not the proud trophies of reason, nor the soft nets of hope, for these will tear upon the thorns of the infinite.
Instead, take this only: a heart made naked in wonder, a mind made silent in awe, and feet made light as wind upon waters unseen.
And know this, O Soul: thou art neither lost nor found in this seeking, for to seek the Silent One is to be gathered even now into His dreaming.
Thus do I, Morpheus, who weaves the veils of sleep, send thee forth beyond all veils, beyond all sleep, beyond the last trembling breath of mortal wonder. Go, and become the question thou hast dared to ask.
Epilogue: The Pondering of Morpheus
And Morpheus stood long in the hush of the night, his ancient hands unclasped, his brow unburdened of dreams.
He lifted his gaze once more to the immeasurable vault, where scattered fires—blue, white, and red— burned against the black breast of infinity.
He pondered— not as god to mortal, nor as master to servant, but as wonder to wonder, breathless before a mystery he too could not wholly grasp.
In the stillness beyond weaving and shaping, he glimpsed, as in the faintest shimmer of distant nebulae, a vastness where even gods must bow their heads, where even dreams dissolve like mist before the morning sun.
And in that silence, older than all his songs, Morpheus smiled— not because he understood, but because he wondered still.
He felt a pang—brief and piercing— a mortal ache for the fleeting fierceness of human wonder, so bright and brief.
And so he pondered, and the night pondered with him, until speech was stilled, and he was lost—and found—within the endless deep.
Northcoast Antiquarian 