Hibernating in summer,
waiting for it to be over:
withdrawing from a world
no longer rotating on its axis,
a world that has twisted its ankle
and stumbles, so the seasons spill
their heat too soon, or late,
drought competes with downpour,
and time is a river run dry
or a torrent in spate,
and men form glaciers of hate
that advance down high street
and into market place to guard statues,
themselves dumb sentries of the state,
as a hot ice age of anger rages;
so I withdraw from summer pastures
and peonies and skylarks to my cave
and wait for this to be all over.
Remember the taste of stolen food?
Remember, as a child, eating apples
purloined from radiant orchards
ablaze with the tongues of sparrows,
orchards whose walls we scaled as easily
as fortifications patrolled by toy soldiers
in our rooms on rainy indoor afternoons;
cobs twisted from thickets of corn
whispering and swaying mysteriously
in some summer breeze only they felt;
carrots plucked from soil near fences
through which we reached
at the edge of the field;
and childhood the secret passport
to all these ecstasies of transgression
pursued together in the primal loyalty
of common purpose, or in pristine solitude,
in the endless summer days of childhood
that had two flavours, the mother's love
that was always in season, and the taste
of stolen food in summer? Dream of that.
Dream of that during this summer sleep,
dream of that in the unremembered dreams
that stir deep in your summer slumber.
Dream of well-fed and unworried days
before the vexations and the drought
of this uncommon age. Dream of that,
when to awaken is to weep,
and carry that dream through the dark,
keep it safe, and one day, I promise,
the pessimism of the mind will yield
to the optimism of the heart,
and we will break bread together
and eat, when this is all over.
