Against the Evidence: Selected Poems, 1934–1994

Here in Bed

Here in Bed Here in bed behind a brick wall I can make order and meaning, but how do I begin? How do I emerge without panic to the sounds and mass of people in the street? Are they human who stare as I pass by, as if sizing me up for a mugging or a filthy proposition, and am I human to have to be frightened and on guard? It's people I'm afraid of, afraid of my own kind, knowing their angers and schemes and violent needs, knowing through knowledge of myself that I have learned to resist, but when I can't I have seen the havoc I have made. It's this, knowing their desperatemotives, as I have known mine, I'm afraid of in them. I hide upon a bed behind a brick wall and listen to engines roaring up and down the street and to voices shouting to one another and find no meaning or order in them, as there is none in me when I am free of self-restraint. The bed is my victory over fear. The bed returns me to my self as I was young and dreaming of the beauty of the trees and faces of people. 736 | Poems of the 1980s ...