TV Men: The Sleeper

by Anne Carson

The sleeper, real and dear, is carved on the dark.
Minerals of sleep travelling into him.
Travelling out of him.
Signal leaps in his wrist.
Caught to me, caught to my nerve.

Night kneels over the sleeper.
Where did his journey begin, where will
it burn through to?
And what does he swim for now.
Swim, sleeper, swim.


Your peace as an evangelist to me.
Your transformations unknown.
I study your sleeping form
at the bottom of the pool
like a house I could return to,

like a head to be cradled in the arms.
Unless you are asleep I cannot make my way
across the night
and through my isolation.
Your small hands lap at the wave.

And contradict everything her, passion
a whole darkness swung against the kind of sleep we
know,
the stumbled-into sleep of lanterns clipped on for tour of the mine.
You dove once

into your privatest presentiment
and stayed, face down in your black overcoat.
To my wonder.
Endlessness runs in your like leaves on the tree of night.
To live here one must forget much.


from Glass, Irony, and God