I took my bed into the forest.

How peaceful, I thought,

when the full moon came out.

The white stag nibbled my pillow,

the nightbird sang in the hand

of the huge hairy ape.

It was not the bird of paradise.

It was a gypsy with a mandolin.

I had to run naked with my bed,

knock at the prison gate,

ask for their darkest solitary.

They obliged, rats and all …

The executioner’s lovely daughter

coming to visit on tiptoes.

Sad bread she brought, the world’s saddest.

Her beauty bandaged my eyes.

No small feat to get that bed

out of there on insomnia’s bicycle.

Like a worm crossing the Brooklyn Bridge,

I found myself in a philosopher’s kitchen.

It was cold and white as at the Pole.

Snow kept falling into empty pots.

I could have used a team of dogs

to pull my bed, a queue of sleepwalkers …

At the late movies where I found myself next,

bedded under the screen,

the great Egyptian-style theater empty,

one could hear the wind between stars.

In the picture, a lonely veiled woman

clutched a handkerchief to her breast.

Are you the gypsy, I shouted?

And if so, where’s your mandolin?

No, she replied. I’m the executioner’s lovely daughter.

I’m on my way to the Galapagos Islands.

I need tortoise glasses to look for my love

who is asleep in the dark.