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SLEEPING IN THE AFTERNOON
- Wesleyan University Press
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SLEEPING IN THE AFTERNOON The heat-stunned hills at midday grow gradually quiet, even the insects' hum lulls deep within that belled flower, red-throated, cool, closed eyelids against the light. Then crossing the serene, dark hips, the rounded shoulders rubbed smooth by the south-prevailing wind, to the muscled, recumbent back where you ride consenting, as a ship consents to its mooring when the weather is kind, the wind easy and full of the scent of desert and ripening figs. This drifting can only be wondered at: perfect and huge, your own chalked thoughts and history like cupped seeds. All bannered and streaming with colored flags that signal the four horizons of unknowing peace— how you stop then, calm and complete in the snapping sounds, the rambowed geometry. And the telephone's ringing that summons you back is no more and no less than the prayer-call of a world that has always pulled you forth with her promises: everything etched and distinct and all your questions answered, if only you will choose again, this once more, to be born, to carry existence as Atlas carries the earth, continually and with unchanged diligence, though tricked into it, though he thought he had escaped. 11 ...