WEBVTT

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Two more.

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Waking at Dusk From a
Nap, this poem is called.

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If you've done that, you'll
recall a moment of confusion.

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You look out the window.

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The clock would say,
for example, 6 o'clock.

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It's either dusk or dawn,
you have no idea which.

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So this could even
be accompanied

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by not knowing where you are.

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But just as you move--

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[SNAPS FINGERS]

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In that first moments of
consciousness out of sleep,

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you're not-- you don't
know where you are in time.

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You don't know where
you are in space.

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And that pretty much
puts you adrift in terms

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of knowing where you are.

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And yet rapidly
somehow, we regather

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whatever information is
necessary to know where we are.

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That's all that happens
in this poem in terms

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of direct and dramatic action.

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It has a pretty slow plot.

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But there are many other
things that happen to it.

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Waking at dusk from a nap.

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In the years that passed
through an afternoon's dream,

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like tape that fast forward,
there are syllables somehow

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in the waterfall.

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And in the dream I
hear them each clearly.

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A classroom of children
reciting their names.

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I am not in the dream.

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It's as if I am the dream.

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The dream in which such
distinctions go without saying,

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and in which a confusion
I may soon have--

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did I wake at dawn or dusk--

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seems anticipated.

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A strand of stars goes by, like
elephants spliced trunk to tail

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in children's books
or ivory carvings.

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And the dream won't say if
they're through for the night,

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or amiably headed for work.

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And the dream and
once, I remember,

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it seemed I was the dream.

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The dream tilts
up to pour me out.

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For an instant
when I wake there's

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a whir, perhaps of
props and stagehands.

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And a laggard star
scrambles over the transom.

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Then the grainy world with
its swirls and lesions,

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its puckering dusk light,
its dimming patina, its used

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and casual beauty,
reassembles itself exactly.

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And I climb down from bed,
gather my spilled book

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from the floor, and
watch the lights

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come on in the valley
like bright type being

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set in another language.

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