Through hours of a brittle transparence, I lie, with hair loosed to the night. The moon with her lingering laughter Spills slowly her unholy light. And now as the death-bearing brightness Is feeling my brow and my eyes, I melt, I become as a billow, Whose crest is sucked back in its rise. My mother is breathing there near me, And father is restless in sleep. While I, over all my beloved, My terror-filled watch must keep. Through rooms that are rank, archangels Are stirring: appalling, divine. I hear an unquieted crying: A child, and it is not mine. The nightlamp by thousands of bedsides Of anguish, the moon appears. I long to silence the sobbing, But these are my own weak tears. The things in the room are abandoned, The clothes, and the chair, and the chest.... I fumble to clutch at distance, To be but a hand bearing rest! The chilled ones should be my companions, The freezing, my arms would immure! I feel that the rich and the many Are children to me, and so poor! For all I must care, since all suffer, My sleep is glassy, it shakes.... I hear how each one in the morning Breathes painfully as he awakes. The broken trees sway in the window, Wide skies to the winds are unfurled. I cover with my own blanket Each helpless, shivering world. |