This is called Poem For the Sandman.
The child begins to walk toward her own private sleeping place.
In the pocket of her bathrobe, she clenches a hand grenade.
She is lumbering through the lumber yard,
like a titmouse with goose bumps.
She waves goodbye to the orthodox dart games.
The noodle shops have returned to their ant holes,
gulp and a single spore has traveled all the way
from Wichita to tuck her in and tell her a story.
They're at a juvenile crossroads,
livestock are dragging their saliva in a semi-circle.
It is like pulling taffy.
The child stands there for a moment,
sees herself as an ancient washer woman playing
bingo on Saturday nights.
She, the child, is counting lemons and squirming
before a quiz.
She is standing in a vestibule, an airless, gravelly vestibule
when a hearse pulls up and offers her a lift.
Audibly aching, she swerves to miss some typhoid victims.
Being shampooed by an uncle on Furlough, who pampers her
with infinitesimal sighs and bounces into bed at last,
as into a cedar bough.
And the sandman stops playing pinball, to mend her cocoon,
to wrench her shroud.
He has had his eye out for her all along.
Her tired little soul could not survive another war.
That's a poem that probably could use an introduction.
I could say something about it, but in a way,
you don't want to, because you don't
want to limit what somebody else may find in it,
but I will say something.
The reason that-- my excuse for jumping around in a poem like
that, is that it--
well, there's something mystical going on too.
But also it's a very common thing too,
is that it's just simply between the waking and a dream state.
But also trying to--
it's not written in a child's language at all,
but you think of what a shifting world a little child lives.
And say about a two-year-old child, when they're just
getting a grasp on some language and understanding
some concepts.
And they must get very weird glimpses of us,
that's all I can say.