The Sleeping Watchman
The Sleeping Watchman
The things I had lived through demanded another translation through my tired body,
there were so many roads, so many doors shut with keys made of wax,
I walked through fog, exhausted, and by mistake fell asleep in the cold sand,
far off towers were collapsing, bell towers swaying without sound,
in the heavy silence of things an old man made signs to me from the dark,
"I am your watchman," he whispered, "come and lie down inside my sleeping wolf."
I would lie down and wake in the green light of a foreign moon,
a ship passed by with no masts, no sailors, only shadows on its deck,
it was the hour that calls toward forgetting, the hour with no hands and no name,
my eyelashes still held the world shut, the dew had filled them with salt,
somewhere closer the old man kept whispering, "come, come, I am your watchman,"
with a light wave of his hand he wanted to lead me toward a gate of smoke.
He made strange signs to convince me, old gestures from forgotten centuries,
he was my watchman, asleep in a very narrow place, in a cave of salt,
beyond it were others, wandering on that same endless field,
like a blind man I could see past their borders, I could only listen, not look,
three crooked trees grew there and the sky above stayed silent like a cracked bell,
it meant stillness stretching far into the distance, a stillness heavy as wet earth.
The others were on that field, I listened, I didn't speak, I felt their breathing,
each one claimed to have wandered the same endless road,
my poor watchman, condemned to a silence harsh as a river stone,
led them through the glass forest (they howled in fear, he fed them ash),
from every side dark springs flowed, the forest was inside each of them,
they slept on ash, a forest poured out of their bodies like water from a broken jar.
Someone said, "if we got out of here we'd see how many of us there are,
we swarm everywhere like shadows with no home,"
I called out to them, "sit down quietly on the shore, sit down like shadows,"
I was their watchman, lost within my own silence,
a woman had climbed into a tree, wanting to listen to the depths of the earth,
the sky showed stillness stretching far into the distance, I stood there with a horizon over my eyes,
the others had lain down inside wolves, staying deep within them, listening to the earth weep.
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