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Heads: with Lucien Becker
- Wesleyan University Press
- Chapter
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Heads with Lucien Becker I There is no longer any reason to confuse My breath with the room's. Sleep empties the pillow; The world looks into various windows Where human beings are unfinished, Like blueprints; no substance has come. Meadow-saffron dries, tenses. Morning pulverizes it With a single vague foot, heavy as with All the sleepless eyelids that there are. The wellsprings are gray as the sky; The smoky wind, a wind for headless people, Flees with the thousands of voices That solitude waits for, like tide-slack. Above the roofs everything is empty; Light cannot get all the way up To where it was, stalled in dim lamp-bulbs And bottles drunk dry to hold it down. 54 II Beyond the sill the day has started and quit. The sheet has cut off my head; my mirror's Still deep with the whole night, And the road has made great progress Into the wall. A fly goes all around In a big balance. I used to lie here, darling, With unimproved light: I took it from your brow To mine, a glimmer over well-springs, Not zoned, not floor-planned for death. But a building you can see through is rising: They are settling and dressing the stones That pain from everywhere, so long as human, Fastens onto like clothespins. Lie still, though; We're not hanging. You are always covered By your smooth forehead and your eyelids; You are grazed by no tissued humming Of razor wire, or by the shadows that come out Framing, scraping, hosing-down sides of glass, And leave for a specified time The sides of their heads against banks. 55 ...