Beautiful, ah always so
– this letting go of things, this
kneeling, no, prostration of the spirit,
in rehearsal of our last
mysterious release, the sacrament of death,
drifting now as then at evening’s end,
consciousness calling quits, the body’s abrupt
mechanism slowing, slowing, workmen going home,
acquiescence of limbs at the approach of Id,
the garrulous old night-watchman, taking over,
settling down among the weird
luminosities of sleep, guardian of the shadow-factory,
God’s confederate I trust, and must.
Beautiful, O beautiful to be thus
a source of pleasure, if involuntary,
something for an old man to doze over,
to be young again in the dark warm with voices
alive with quicksilver kisses, tears,
tigers running through dream-woods
and impossible poetry.