Night-light

The night-light burns its angry, hungry red, ravening the night fast as my sleepless saving; if it can eat at this red rate, awakening is false and sleeping true, time and its savage dream of light a lie, and dream dark fact to its pale fantasy. So dream: in the still pool beneath the mind, lose all our wear of days, our loss of nights. Forget deep as the ape—no! to the fish— farther, to the cell, back until the clock drowns in the sea by which we swarm and live, our memory in genes, our reason that we breathe, our understanding oxygen and light. And the result? Drowned daily into calm, we sink but to awake, shock of sun or night, and there the ticking or the humming clock.

Previous Contents Home Next