Welcome back to the Daily Poem here on the Close Reeds Podcast Network. I'm David Kern.

Today's poem is by Gwynne Harwood, an Australian poet who lived from 1920 to 1995.

She is generally considered one of the greatest, the best of Australia's poets. She published over 420 works, including 386 poems and 13 librettos.

And the most significant poetry prize in Australia is called the Gwynne Harwood Prize.

The poem that I'm going to read today is called A Game of Chess.

It goes like this. It's noted that it's

too John Brody. Nightfall. The town's chromatic nocturn wakes dark brilliance on the river.

Colors drift and tremble as enormous shadows lift Orion to his place. The heart remakes that

piece torn in the blaze of day. Inside your room are music, warmth, and wine, the board with chessmen

set for play. The harpsichord begins a fugue. The light is multiplied. A game. The heart's impossible ideal, to choose among

a host of paths and know that if the kingdom crumbles, one can yield and have the choice again.

Abstract and real joined in their trance of thought, two players show the calm of gods above a troubled field

so this poem is a actually a patrarchan sonnet has got a octave of eight lines and then assessed it

you know six lines and although you might not have heard it while

I was reading it, there is, if you're looking at it, there is some, you know, pretty standard

patrarchan rhymes going on here. But the way that she uses enjambment keeps those lines flowing

and the poem, you know, drifting forward. So it's not as sing-songy as a lot of sun.

This poem opens with this incredible image,

just the word nightfall and then a colon.

The town's chromatic nocturn wakes dark brilliance on the river.

Colors drift and tremble.

His enormous shadows lift Orion to his place.

...