Then walk the floor, or twist upon your bed <br />While bullets, cold and blind, rush backward from the target’s eye, <br />And say, “I will not dream that dream again. I will not dream <br />Of long-spent whispers vanishing down corridors <br />That turn through buildings I have never known; <br />The snap of rubber gloves; the tall child, blind, <br />Who calls my name; the stained sheets <br />Of another girl. And then a low bell, <br />Sounding through shadows in the cold, <br />Disturbs the screen that is my mind in sleep. <br /> <br /> <br />“—Your face is never clear. You always stand <br />In charcoal doorways in the dark. Part of your face <br />is gone. You say, ‘Just to be through with this damned world. <br />Contagious fogs blow in. Christ, we could die <br />The way deer sometimes do, their antlers locked, <br />Rotting in snow.’ <br />“And I can never speak. <br />But have I ever told the truth to you? <br />I did not ask for this; a new disease threads in. <br />I want your lips upon my lips, your mouth <br />Upon my breasts, again, again, again, again; <br />I want the morning filled with sun. <br /> <br /> <br />“But I must dream once more of cities burned away, <br />Corrupted wood, and silence on the piers. <br />Love is a sickroom with the roof half gone <br />Where nights go down in a continual rain. <br /> <br /> <br />Heart, heart. I do not live. The lie of peace <br />Echoes to no end; the clocks are dead. <br />What we have had we will not have again.”<br /><br />Weldon Kees<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/girl-at-midnight/
