He Takes Off, Last of All, The World

In Randall Jarrell's "Field & Forest" -- definitely one of my all time favorites -- he offers a luminous image at the end of undressing, both physically and mentally. I didn't hear this poem until I was several semesters deep into my graduate program, but I think it offers a unique and haunting account of quieting down, turning off, and slipping into deep, self-forgetting solitude. The entire poem is wonderful, but this is the image that gets me every time...

At night, from the airplane, all you see is lights,
A few lights, the lights of houses, headlights
And darkness. Somewhere below, beside a light,
The farmer, naked, takes out his false teeth:
He doesn’t eat now. Takes off his spectacles:
He doesn’t see now. Shuts his eyes.
If he were able to he’d shut his ears,
And as it is, he doesn’t hear with them.
Plainly, he’s taken out his tongue: he doesn’t talk.
His arms and legs: at least, he doesn’t move them.
They are knotted together, curled up, like a child’s.
And after he had taken off the thoughts
It has taken him his life to learn,
He takes off, last of all, the world.