The Desert

I dream that I wake up dreaming
In a world of sand. You are gone.
Every grain of us is free. I am free.
The very kids are getting free—
Plato talked about this. This desert
Has no walls, for there is no stone,
For stone is frozen sand, for stone
Is sand in chains. Our silent bombs,
Falling in appalling spalling flash,
Loose the stone city from its lock,
Break the building from its block,
Spring red sand from its red brick.
Every grain of us is free. I am free,
Blasted free of the ball and chain.
My house is two dunes and a tarp.
The children come and go like mice,
Summer-fast on the toaster sand.
Winter brings snow; powder snow;
Throw a snowball, throw a cloud.
“The citizens of France,” writes Taine
Of that revolt’s bleak afterday,
“Are divided as the dust on the roads
Of France. Not one man in the nation
Commands the unconditional loyalty
Of even a hundred other Frenchmen”—
Still Marat’s butcher-stall thrives
Years past sell-by, reeking of stale
Juice, unloved and still unchallenged
In a France of sand, a camel-France;
And our America, sand-America? What
Man commands three—or would
Himself snap on the soldier’s collar,
Yoked in steel to some brother’s neck,
Stranger-bossed like an orphan child?—
Talk not to me of men, but grains.
Every grain of us is free. I am free
From you. You are dry “cremains.”
Throw a snowball, throw a cloud!
I dream that I wake up dreaming
In a world of mud. You are here,
Or someone like you, or even not;
Everything is stuck to itself again;
The brown world is turning green
To celebrate the second marriage
Of steel and verse, Pallas and Mars,
Of philosophy and the watered edge—
Then once again I wake asleep.