In the dark, I thought,why do I love the truth?invisible like thirst,or gravity’s pull, farsweeter than revenge,or justice, even peace,which is not beyondthe door but is the door.The truth that drivesthe nail straight,though it’s not in the nail andit’s not in the wood.Truth as clear and blueas the sky.(We say “trueblue” or “cross myheart,” “cross myheart and hope to die.”)You cannot hammerthe truth intoa person or turnyour wrist anduse the claw topry it out.You cannot pounda nail into the sky.But the truth is there,and here, as blue,to repeat, asthe sky,as the sky.Truth drives the starsstraight into the dark.I woke to the sunand thought, witha start, of howI love the truthand why.
In the Dark
Susan Stewart
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Reprinted with permission from Bramble by Susan Stewart, published by the University of Chicago Press.
© 2026 by The University of Chicago.
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Susan Stewart is a former MacArthur Fellow and Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. She is the author of eight volumes of poetry, including Columbarium, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her most recent books are Bramble, a book of poems, Poetry’s Nature, a book of lectures, and Last Stops of the Night Journey, a co-translation, with Patrizio Ceccagnoli, of the poems of Milo De Angelis.
This seventh collection by acclaimed poet Susan Stewart offers a meditation on difficulty and the powers of nature.
In the biblical book of Judges, the bramble is a figure of destructive leadership, thwarting the lives of trees. In ballads and fairy tales, roses grow “’round the briar” in tragic contrast to heroines who are enveloped by the thorns. One of the oldest English words and an even older symbol, “bramble” reminds us of the entangled and unending struggle that comes with living in time and searching beyond appearances. The rough thicket presents impediments, yet it also bears fruit and delicate flowers.
With Bramble, Susan Stewart has composed a book of many forms, including satires, elegies, meditations, and songs. Bramble is also an exploration of the act of making such forms. The book’s three sections—“Mirror,” “Briar,” and “Channel”—link lyric time to our lives as they are situated in history and nature. Reflecting upon illness, grief, and change, the poems follow the progress of day and night, the movement of the seasons, and the path of water from springs to the sea.
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