Blackbird Archive← v19n1, Spring 2020Poetry · Volume 19, Number 1
From Winter 1947
Those days at school in the dull teeming fortress.
At dusk I walked home under the signs.
Then came the whispering without lips: “Wake up, sleepwalker!”
and every object pointed toward The Room.
Fifth floor, the room facing the yard. The lamp burned
in a circle of terror every night.
I sat up in bed without eyelids and saw
filmstrip filmstrip of mentally ill thoughts.
As if it was necessary . . .
As if the last of childhood had to be smashed to bits
so it could pass easily through the mesh.
As if it was necessary . . .
I read books of glass, but saw only the other:
the stains emerging through the wallpaper.
It was the living dead
who wanted to have their portraits painted!
