To Sleep
Then out of the darkness leapt a bare hand
that stroked my brow, “Come along, child;
stretch out your feet under the blanket.
Darkness will give you back, unremembering.
Do not be afraid.” So I put down my book
and pushed like a finger through sheer silk,
the autobiographical part of me, the am,
snatched up to a different place, where I was
no longer my body but something more—
the compulsive, disorderly parts of me
in a state of equalization, everything sliding off:
war, love, suicide, poverty—as the rebellious,
mortal, I, I, I lay, like a beetle irrigating a rose,
my red thoughts in a red shade all I was.
~ Henri Cole
