Genesis - Book One

“. . . . Me next to sleep, all that is left of Eden,"
-The one who speaks is not remarkable
In the great city, circa 1930,
His state is not uncommon in the world,
0, by no means, sleepless and seeking sleep
As one who wades in water to the thighs,
Dragging it soft and heavy near the shore;
For now his body's lapse and ignorance
Permits his heavy mind certain loose sleeves,
Loose sleeves of feeling drawing near a drowse:
He knows of dark and sleep the unity,
He knows all being's consanguinity,
All anguish sinks into the first of seas,
The sea which soothes with softness ultimate
-Thus he descends,
***************and coughs, coughs!
*******************************the old cold comes, "
Jack-in-the-box, the conscious mind snaps up!
-He wakes,
*******his fuzzed gaze strains the dark,
And at the window's outline looks, in shock,
To see a certain whiteness glitter there,
Snow! dragging him to the window
With hurried heart. The childhood love still lives in him,
Like a sweet tooth in grown-up married girls,
December's white delight, a fourth year wish,
The classic swan disguised in modern life,
Freedom and silence shining in New York!
But, standing by the window, sees the truth,
Four stories down the blank courtyard on which
The moonlight shines, diagonal and pale
-And high, the moon's half-cut and glittering shell
Shines like the ice on which electric shines-
Says to himself, "How each view may be false!"
And then the whole thing happens all over again,
Waking, walking to the window, looking out,
Seeking for snow in May, a miracle
Quick in the dozing head's compelled free mix
-He sees the snow which is not snow, but light,
The moonlight's lie, error's fecundity
Fallen from the dead planet near the roof-

Absolute dark and dream space fall on him,
And he through dark and space begins to fall,
At first afraid, then horrified, then calm.
Then the wide stillness in which dream belief
Begins, prepared for all. And he begins
Once more to tell himself all that he knows
Over and over and over and over again,
All of the lives that have come close to his,
All of his life, much mixed in memory
Many a night through which he cannot sleep,
Many a year, over and over again!

But now a voice begins, strange in the dark,
As from a worn victrola record, needle
Which skims and whirrs, a voice intoned
As of a weak old man with foreign accent,
Ironic, comic, flat and matter of fact,
With alternation measured, artificial,
*************************moaned,
And yet with sympathy, simpatico
************************* as if
A guardian angel sang!
Then other voices,
Bodiless in the dark, entered in chorus:
"He must tell all, amazed as the three Magi
When they beheld the puking child! All is
Not natural! That's Life, the Magi too
Might have remarked to one another, Life
Full of all things but what one would expect-"

And he who listened said then to himself,
"A daemon, a daemon, no doubt: who else?
Such as was heard by Socrates, perhaps,
Or an angel, the angel who struggled with Jacob,
If Jacob lived, if angels also live—“