• I •
The night after the accident I dreamt of a pockmarked man
who walked through the alleys singing.
Danton!
Not the other one—Robespierre doesn’t take such walks,
Robespierre spends a careful hour each morning on his toilette,
the rest of the day he devotes to The People.
In the paradise of the pamphlets, among the machines of virtue.
Danton—
or the man who wore his mask
seemed to be standing on stilts.
I saw his face from beneath.
Like the scarred moon,
half in light, half in mourning.
I wanted to say something.
A weight in the breast, the plummet
that makes the clocks go,
the hands turn: year 1, year 2 . . .
A sharp scent like sawdust in the tiger stalls.
And—as always in dreams—no sun.
But the walls were shining
in the alleys that curved
down to the waiting room, the curved room,
the waiting room where we all . . .