MN Poetry: F. Scott Fitzgerald's "We Leave Tonight..."

Posted at 11:17 AM on November 8, 2010 by Marianne Combs (0 Comments)
Filed under: Minnesota Poets, Poetry

Although not known as a poet, F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote poetry all his life, mostly in the form of song lyrics or rhyming banter. Here's a poem from his collection "Poems 1911 - 1940" which was published posthumously. "We Leave To-night..." also appears in the Minnesota Historical Society's collection Where One Voice Ends Another Begins: 150 Years of Minnesota Poetry.

We Leave To-Night...

We leave to-night...
Silent, we filled the still, deserted street,
A column of dim gray,
And ghosts rose startled at the muffled beat
Along the moonless way;

The shadowy shipyards echoed to the feet
That turned from night and day.

And so we linger on the windless decks,
See on the spectre shore
Shades of a thousand days, poor gray-ribbed wrecks...
Oh, shall we then deplore
Those futile years!
See how the sea is white!
The clouds have broken and the heavens burn
To hollow highways, paved with gravelled light
The churning of the waves about the stern
Rises to one voluminous nocturne,
We leave to-night.

- "We Leave To-night..." by F. Scott Fitzgerald, as it appears in Where One Voice Ends Another Begins: 150 Years of Minnesota Poetry published by MHS Press. Reprinted here with permission from the publisher.

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