The big room’s an odd place to sleep in
when the wind whispers, the bed sighs
and your stomach coughs up lumps of food.
Look at him, fast asleep and sweating,
smiling, at peace, as devoid of sense
as the times in which we live. Some sort of mirror
at the end of the room; as we fall asleep,
drops of bitterness form on our lips.
No way of knowing what love is,
you can only tap it out or sing it,
sneeze it, or else let it choke you.
The basic questions, generalised grief
keep him and his generation busy,
but if the distress gets to cosmic levels,
life is still holding me in its arms.
What levels of thickness the skin attains!
How well we learn to tolerate each other!
Yet night after night he comes close to yelping,
his muscles tense in pursuit of a dream,
and his knees dig their imprint into my tummy.