The speaker in Carolyn Kizer's "Night Sounds" is a woman facing the "terror and nostalgia" of living alone. She focuses on the sounds of the night that keep her awake.
“Night Sounds” consists of five unrimed verse paragraphs; the first three have four lines each, and the remaining two have five lines each.
First Verse Paragraph: “The moonlight on my bed keeps me awake”
In the first verse paragraph, the speaker asserts that the moonlight is keeping her awake. She says she is living alone now, and then catalogues the sounds that are keeping her awake also: she calls them “voices of evening.”
She hears a child “weeping at nightmares” and the sounds of a woman making love. She expresses her mixed emotion by claiming, “Everything [is] tinged by terror or nostalgia.”
Second Verse Paragraph: “No heavy, impassive back to nudge with one foot”
In the second verse paragraph, she asserts that there is no man in her bed now. She cannot nudge him awake and “coax” him to hold her. She notices that the “the moon’s creamy beauty is transformed / Into a map of impersonal desolation.” While moonlight may be romantic for lovers, its pale light can seem cold and isolating to someone alone.
Although the speaker does not make clear why she is alone, the reader might suspect it is because of a divorce, because the speaker seems bitter. She refers to her lack of a man as “No heavy, impassive back to nudge.” Not exactly a description of a loving relationship.
Third Verse Paragraph: “But, restless in this mock dawn of moonlight”
The speaker avers that she is restless, and the moonlight that keeps her awake by “chill[ing] [her] spirit” also makes her change the reality of her life with her former mate.
As she begins to address him, she reminds him that he was “never able to lie quite peacefully at [her] side.” He was always restless, getting up before morning, and she accuses him of “withholding something.”
Fourth Verse Paragraph: “Awake before morning, restless and uneasy”
She continues addressing her absent former mate, reminding him again about his restlessness. He would get out of bed, “trying not to disturb” her, but she was just lying there “feigning sleep.” The relationship seems to be based on appearances, instead of reality.
And even though the speaker is reminding her former mate of these things, she admits that with the night “nearly over, the light not as cold / As a full cup of moonlight.” The light that the mate turned on was not as cold as the natural light of the moon, because it was almost morning.
Fifth Verse Paragraph: “And there were the lovely times when, to the skies’ cold No”
In the final verse paragraph, the speaker seems suddenly overcome by thinking about the “lovely times” when their relationship was warm and loving, times when he “Impaled [her] with affirmation.”
But such affirmation did not remain, because now she finds herself calling out “in fear, not in love,” and of course, because she is alone, “there is no answer.” Now she hears only “distant voices,” not the voice of a beloved in her home, but voices of far off children and dogs.
