To-night again the moon’s white mat Stretches across the dormitory floor While outside, like an evil cat The pion prowls down the dark corridor, Planning, I know, to pounce on me, in spite For getting leave to sleep in town last night. But it was none of us who made that noise, Only the old brown owl that hoots and flies
I remember when I wrote The Circus I was living in Paris, or rather we were living in Paris Janice, Frank was alive, the Whitney Museum Was still on 8th Street, or was it still something else? Fernand Léger lived in our building Well it wasn’t really our building it was the building we lived in Next to a Grand Guignol troupe who made a lot of noise So that one day I yelled through a hole in the wall
You never wrote the small green book like the poems of Edward Thomas. It was a book I dreamed. But watching the green report of your heart on the monitor it came to me as I stood like one of the doctors in my cap and gown, home, where you've lived like a bachelor at the far end of the house, there is a green diary: the book of the deer, the bear and the elk, with snapshots of Julian and Bob and Harry, old hunting friends dead as the game strung up on poles or drooped across fenders.
Come to me in the silence of the night; Come in the speaking silence of a dream; Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright As sunlight on a stream; Come back in tears, O memory, hope, love of finished years.
Oh dream how sweet, too sweet, too bitter sweet, Whose wakening should have been in Paradise,
Dear love, for nothing less than thee Would I have broke this happy dream; It was a theme For reason, much too strong for fantasy, Therefore thou wak'd'st me wisely; yet My dream thou brok'st not, but continued'st it. Thou art so true that thoughts of thee suffice To make dreams truths, and fables histories; Enter these arms, for since thou thought'st it best, Not to dream all my dream, let's act the rest.
As lightning, or a taper's light, Thine eyes, and not thy noise wak'd me; Yet I thought thee (For thou lovest truth) an angel, at first sight;
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