What do Denys Arcand's "Les Invasions Barbares" and Robert Altman and Raymond Carver's "Short Cuts" have in common besides Oscar nominations? (Arcand won.) The heavy presence of darkness and the movement of comedy over the darkness for one thing. Even Kafka, say some critics and readers -- this reader among them -- cannot be as tragic or as dark without his inherent and irresistible comedic impulses. The lightness comes slowly and from a distance and reaches us over time.

Why now when I feel so much

Life, am I haunted by the dead?

Not the dead I know or knew

But odd characters from such

Stories as Kafka's stark stews

Or films in which, say, rye bread

Is served up as a last lunch

To a grieving family

By a dark haired baker

With a fakir's demeanor.

Or another film in which

A goat-footed old scholar,

Who shares a birthday with me,

Goes down, eased off by his rich,

But now deeply feeling, son.

He, reveling in his sins,

Even sets out to the end

Loaded up with heroin

Amid lovers and good friends.

Even a smart film gives in

As cliched clouds mask the sun

And tasteful but still corny

Music rises and new lives start

Their bumbling bend toward that

Mystery we are find thorny.

No last hat that would crown me

Should seem silly or fall flat;

The end, like love, is too tart

To be held off by the sweet

Consolations, empty tries

At putting our fears to rest.

What dark matter will arrest

Our joy in the end -- defeat,

The last scene before our eyes

Close on another kind of rest?

In the planetarium,

Our eyes become accustomed

To the lack of light, old skull,

Old orb, the old black cracked bowl,

The old cup pouring out cold

Where points of colored light rim

The room as the sun goes dim.

Being here in the domed dark

Is one part of the wonder:

Getting close to the sky's arc

Brings us close across the room

And takes out the world's bright

Nightly growl against the gloom,

Gives news of what was once here.

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