I'm tired of murdering children. <br />Once, long ago today, they wanted to live; <br />now I feel Vietnam the place <br />where rigor mortis is beginning to set-in upon me. <br /> <br />I force silence down the throats of mutes, <br />down the throats of mating-cries of animals who know they are extinct. <br />The chameleon's death-soliloquy is your voice's pulse; <br />your scorched forehead a constellation's suicide-note. <br /> <br />A phonograph needle plunges through long black hair, <br />and stone drips slowly into our veins. <br />The earth has been squandered by the meek. <br />And upsidedown in the earth a dead man walks upon my soles when I walk <br /> <br />A baby is crying. <br />In the swaddling-pages <br />a baby. <br /> <br />'Don't cry. No Solomori's-sword can <br />divide you from the sky. <br />You are one. Fly.' <br /> <br />I'm tired, so tired. <br />I have sleep to do. <br />I have work to dream.<br /><br />Bill Knott<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/end-of-summer-1966/
