Explicating the Twilight

The rat makes her way up

the mulberry tree, the branches

getting thin and risky up close

to the fruit, and she slows.

The berry she is after is so ripe,

there is almost no red. Prospero

thinks of Christopher Smart saying

purple is black blooming. She lifts

her mouth to the berry, stretching.

The throat is an elegant gray.

A thousand shades, Christopher wrote

among the crazy people. A thousand

colors from white to silver.

—

This is from Collected Poems by Jack Gilbert, published by Alfred A. Knopf, 2012.