I
It is there, above him, beyond, behind,
Distant, and near where he lies in his sleep
Bound down as for warranted torture.
Through his eyelids he sees it
Drop off its wings or its clothes.
He groans, and breaks almost from
Or into another sleep.
Something fills the bed he has been
Able only to half-fill.
He turns and buries his head.
II
Moving down his back,
Back up his back,
Is an infinite, unworldly frankness,
Showing him what an entire
Possession nakedness is.
Something over him
Is praying.
It reaches down under
His eyelids and gently lifts them.
He expects to look straight into eyes
And to see thereby through the roof.
III
Darkness. The window-pane stirs.
His lids close again, and the room
Begins to breathe on him
As through the eyeholes of a mask.
The praying of prayer
Is not in the words but the breath.
It sees him and touches him
All over, from everywhere.
It lifts him from the mattress
To be able to flow around him
In the heat from a coal-bed burning
Far under the earth.
He enters-enters with …
What? His tongue? A word?
His own breath? Some part of his body?
Al.
None.
He lies laughing silently
In the dark of utter delight.
IV
It glides, glides
Lightly over him, over his chest and legs.
All breath is called suddenly back
Out of laughter and weeping at once.
His face liquefies and freezes
Like a mask. He goes rigid
And breaks into sweat from his heart
All over his body
In something’s hands.
V
He sleeps, and the window-pane
Ceases to flutter.
Frost crawls down off it
And backs into only
The two bottom corners of glass.
VI
He stirs, with the sun held at him
Out of late-winter dawn, and blazing
Levelly into his face.
He blazes back with his eyes closed,
Given, also, renewed
Fertility, to raise
Dead plants and sleep-walking beasts
Out of their thawing holes,
And children up,
From mortal women or angels,
As true to themselves as he
Is only in visited darkness
For one night out of the year,
And as he is now, seeing straight
Through the roof, wide, wider,
Wide awake.
Leave a Reply