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Bums, on Waking
- Wesleyan University Press
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Bums) on Waking Bums, on waking, Do not always find themselves In gutters with water running over their legs And the pillow ofthe curbstone Turning hard as sleep drains from it. Mostly, they do not know But hope for where they shall come to. The opening ofthe eye is precious, And the shape ofthe body also, Lying as it has fallen, Disdainfully crumpling earthward Out ofalcohol. Drunken under their eyelids Like children sleeping toward Christmas, They wait for the light to shine Wherever it may decide. Often it brings them staring Through glass in the rich part oftown, Where the forms ofhumanized wax Are arrested in midstride With their heads turned, and dressed By force. This is ordinary, and has come To be disappointing. They expect and hope for Something totally other: That while they staggered last night For hours, they got clear, Somehow, ofthe city; that they Have burst through a hedge, and are lying In a trampled rose garden, Pillowed on a bulldog's side, A watchdog's, whose breathing Is like the earth's, unforcedOr that they may, once a year Helmets / L 72 (Any dawn now), awaken In church, not on the coffin boards Of a back pew, or on furnace-room rags, But on the steps ofthe altar Where candles are opening their eyes With all-seeing light And the green stained glass ofthe windows Falls on them like sanctified leaves. Who else has quite the same Commitment to not being sure What he shall behold, come from sleepA child, a policeman, an effigy? Who else has died and thus risen? Never knowing how they have got there, They might just as well have walked On water, through walls, out ofgraves, Through potter's fields and through barns, Through slums where their stony pillows Refused to harden, because of Their hope for this morning's first light, With water moving over their legs More like living cover than it is. Goodbye to Serpents Through rain falling on us no faster Than it runs down the wall we go through, My son and I shed Paris like a skin And slip into a cage to say goodbye. Through a hole in the wall ofthe Jardin des Plantes We come to go round The animals for the last time; Tomorrow we set out for home. For some reason it is the snakes To which we seem to owe Goodbye to Serpents / I73 ...