V - John Ciardi (from 'As If')

The deaths about you when you stir in sleep
hasten me toward you. Out of the bitter mouth
that sours the dark, I sigh for what we are
who heave our vines of blood against the air.

Old men have touched their dreaming to their hearts:
that is their age. I touch the moment's dream
and shrink like them into the thing we are
who drag our sleeps behind us like fear.

Murderers have prayed their victims to escape,
then killed because they have stayed. In murdering time
I think of rescues from the thing we are
who cannot slip one midnight from the year.

Scholars have sunk their eyes in penitence
for sins themselves invented. Sick as Faust
I trade with devils, damning what we are
who walk our dreams out on a leaning tower.

Saints on their swollen knees have banged at death:
it opened; they fell still. I bang at life
to knock the walls away from what we are
who raise our deaths about us when we stir.

Lovers unfevering sonnets from their blood
have burned with patience, labouring to make fast
one blood-beat of the bursting thing we are.
I have no time. I love you by despair.

Till on the midnight of the thing we are
the deaths that nod about us when we stir,
wake and become. Once past that fitful hour
our best will be to dream of what we were.



[From:
Ciardi, J. (1955) As If; poems new and Selected. New Brunswick, N.J: Rutgers University Press, p8 - p9.]

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