Rumor of Cortez

To Sleep

36 To Sleep “I’ve given it up,” my lover writes as resignation is her job and therefore mine, she’s seen me here, eyewitness, swears she’s watched one night’s sky, a constellation of minarets, owing its incompletion to the short memory of saints— because saints must be so possessed, she knows their names and lineage, their coats of arms— What saints are these? open, cloaks fluttering so to trick the night—that she hears the holy, dreamless, their blessings rise unfeathered as my own sleep (and therefore hers) seeps past the door. Give us a drama, a scattering of birds loosed from the aviary—motiveless, instinctual, a flight unmarred by clues, bell through cloud. Even the privileged do not live as we have done. Sweet angel of a thousand sleepless turns, stay awhile, I beg her, (quickly now— we’re running out of servants, out of port) stay this frayed, moth-eaten night. ...