Like loose reins back of a horse’s mane,
Or like a lasso dropped and taking any old shape, one
end frayed,
He’s asleep, head at the bed’s foot, with a dream
He doesn’t even need. Sometimes he walks out to where
There’s a haystack by a winding river.
He doesn’t know it but they both look like him.
No empty glasses, no ashtray, no crucifix;
A tousled shirt which, as the colors
Washed out of it, became more intense, more awake
To sunlight. The clock’s so dusty the hour
Hardly shows; he doesn’t even know he’s slept through
The noon whistle, a giant sad voice
That cries into the burrows and treetops on the edge
of town.
He likes to be found in bed. But if, by chance,
No one comes today, he’ll wake up close to dark,
Make a little sandwich that won’t be enough,
And have to leave to be more satisfied.
But if someone earlier wakes him up, he turns
His body over, sending dust from the blanket through
the air—
Some motes rising, others falling—to sparkle
In a wide dirty ray. Then it will move over
And touch him. He moves again, makes more haze.
While out in the tractor grit of one of those farms
Is a sundial so shined on by the earthy air
It can’t be read. Only time, he knows,
Will clean the daylight. And he’s content: he thinks
He won’t be lying still till dark.
Haze
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