Night of Oblivion, and: Night of the Gowanus Timothy Donnelly (bio) Night of Oblivion Enigmatic purple on a plate of crumbled cloud, the dot at the center of the wildflower Queen Anne's lace is said to recall a dropof Stuart blood pricked onto a doily the queen was at work on when something distracted her from her purpose. History forgot to document what broke the queen's focus, but it seems to me fairly obvious, having lived with it long enough, that memorywas the culprit. "You again," she gasped, pivoting her face forty-five degrees to appeal directly to the bright sun to prise unwelcome remembrance from the countless fast raccoon hands of her neurons. Strong sensation obliviates thought–thusthis preponderance of neighborhood leaf blowers, synecdochic of much of Western culture. It takes so much loudness to remove an oak leaf from a gutter. Native to Afghanistan, the wildflower also answers to the name of wild carrot for no reason other thanthat's what it is–its spindly ivory taproot bred over centuries into what's become the most reliable source of true hot orange in most our lives, with the exception of the sun as it sets, which Anne took note of in the windows at Kensington Palace, waitingfor pure darkness, the garden only in outline, the ghost of her son luminous in moonlight as a paper boat afloat on the still-round pond. [End Page 40] Night of the Gowanus The drum track refers to matter's tendency to integrate while the notes that make up the melody assert themselvesas individuals, the way particles constitutive of wholes always do, recapitulating the dynamic equilibrium of the universe. Streams of tail- and headlights on the curve of the viaduct outlined like clip art with the peach tones of sunset under itand above it a sky's ombré of icicle- to coal-blue–where a faint few stars think things over–refer to motorists as iridescent geometrics on the rippling face of the water refer to the coal tar dumped into it by industry forover a century, sludging the canal bottom in thicknesses equal to twenty mattresses piled one on top the other, as in a fairy tale of sensitivity, except these mattresses are irrevocably toxic, and the princess is a phantasm of oyster shellsand auto parts, parts likewise of bodies disappeared here in the dark, lives grieved without finality as the canal itself is grieving the tidal inlet of bright creeks intricate with water life it used to be before Dutch settlers perplexed it into propertyfrom the Lenape, humanity again done in by its own traffic, confusing its light with stars, to whom such details matter nothing. [End Page 41] Timothy Donnelly timothy donnelly is the author of four collections of poetry, including Chariot, forthcoming in May from Wave Books. He teaches at Columbia University and lives in Brooklyn, NY. Copyright © 2023 Yale University