'Untitled'

Dark night, and silent, calm, and lovely,
That stills the efforts of our lives,
Rare, excellent-kind, and behovely
No matter how the poet strives
To weave with epithets and clauses
Your soundless web, he falters, pauses,
And your enchantment slips between
His hands, as if it's never been.
Of all times most inbued with beauty,
You lend us by your spell relief
From ineradicable grief
(If for a spell), and pain, and duty.
We sleep, and nightly are made whole
In all our fretted mind and soul.

     -- Vikram Seth