A lilac heat sickened the meadow;

high in the wood, a cathedral’s sharp, nicked groins.

No skeleton obstructed the bodies—

all was ours, obsequious wax in our fingers …

Such, the dream: you do not sleep,

you only dream you thirst for sleep,

that someone elsewhere thirsts for sleep—

two black suns singe his eyelashes.

Sunbeams shower and ebb to the flow of iridescent beetles.

The dragonfly’s mica whirs on your cheek.

The wood fills with meticulous scintillations—

a dial under the clockmaker’s tweezers.

It seemed we slept to the tick of figures;

in the acid, amber ether,

they set up nicely tested clocks.

shifted, regulated them to a soprano hair for the heat.

They shifted them here and there, and snipped at the wheels.

Day declined on the blue clock-face;

they scattered shadows, drilled a void—

the darkness was a mast derricked upright.

It seems a green and brown happiness flits beyond us;

sleep smothers the woods;

no elegiacs on the clock’s ticking—

sleep, it seems, is all this couple is up to.