The winner of the 2020 Nobel Prize for Literature is American poet Louise Glück (“for her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal”). I have only one book of her poems but it is excellent and I’m sure to explore more of them. Here is a poem of hers I like very much. It is called The Evening Star.
Tonight, for the first time in many years,
there appeared to me again
a vision of the earth’s splendor:
in the evening sky
the first star seemed
to increase in brilliance
as the earth darkened
until at last it could grow no darker.
And the light, which was the light of death,
seemed to restore to earth
its power to console. There were
no other stars. Only the one
whose name I knew
as in my other life I did her
injury: Venus,
star of the early evening,
to you I dedicate
my vision, since on this blank surface
you have cast enough light
to make my thought
visible again.
In the Dark 