Curtains drawn back, the door ajar. <br />All winter long, it seemed, a darkening <br />Began. But now the moonlight and the odors of the street <br />Conspire and combine toward one community. <br /> <br /> <br />These are the rooms of Robinson. <br />Bleached, wan, and colorless this light, as though <br />All the blurred daybreaks of the spring <br />Found an asylum here, perhaps for Robinson alone, <br /> <br /> <br />Who sleeps. Were there more music sifted through the floors <br />And moonlight of a different kind, <br />He might awake to hear the news at ten, <br />Which will be shocking, moderately. <br /> <br /> <br />This sleep is from exhaustion, but his old desire <br />To die like this has known a lessening. <br />Now there is only this coldness that he has to wear. <br />But not in sleep.—Observant scholar, traveller, <br /> <br /> <br />Or uncouth bearded figure squatting in a cave, <br />A keen-eyed sniper on the barricades, <br />A heretic in catacombs, a famed roué, <br />A beggar on the streets, the confidant of Popes— <br /> <br /> <br />All these are Robinson in sleep, who mumbles as he turns, <br />“There is something in this madhouse that I symbolize— <br />This city—nightmare—black—” <br />He wakes in sweat <br />To the terrible moonlight and what might be <br />Silence. It drones like wires far beyond the roofs, <br />And the long curtains blow into the room.<br /><br />Weldon Kees<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/robinson-at-home/
