When I came back from my last dream, when I

Whirled with the morning snowfall up the lawn,

I looked behind me where my wings were gone

Rusting above the snow, for lack of care,

A pile of rakes and shovels rotted away.

Tools of the world were crumbling into air,

And I, neither the living nor the dead,

Paused in the dusk of dawn to wonder why

Any man clambers upward out of shade

To rake and shovel all his dust away.

I found my body sprawled against the bed.

One hand flopped back as though to ward away

Shovels of light. The body wakes to burial;

But my face rebelled; the lids and lips were gray,

And sridorelimbed that crabs, bor stultend.

A foot reclined over the wrenching thigh,

And suddenly, before I joined my face,

The eyelids opened, and it stared across

The window pane, into the hollow sky.

Neither the living nor the dead I stood,

Longing to leave my poor flesh huddled there

Heaped up for burning under the last laments.

I moved, to leap on spider webs and climb.

But where do spiders fling those filaments,

Those pure formalities of blood and air,

Both perfect and alive? I did no good.

The hands of daylight hammered down my ghost,

And I was home now, bowing into my dust,

To quicken into stupor one more time,

One of the living buried like the dead.