The Sleepwalkers

And the time that was given

to Egypt was Sleep,

and they who walked there

were called The Sleepwalkers.

Strode on through burning dust

in the blue-fired glaze of summer,

through unfailing flood,

through sandstorm and sunstroke.

To be, to sleep, to awaken…

that was the gift of an insect.

With the glittering eye of a hawk

and the beak of an ibis,

with the rasping tongue of a dog;

but stronger than any of these,

the law of drift and silence

overheard through reed-whispers

and unstilled barking.

Twilight, the one returning kingdom,

vaster than daybreak,

the unroofed temple where scribe

and monkey-priest sorted the strings

of birds; on a thread of smoke

the clay spirit climbed,

born of the light and the lotus.

And then, in the green heart

of stone, to sleep at last.

Among the restless, the sun-driven,

to be the one cured and stationed

man: Lord of the death-watch.

And night was a cobra, coiled

in the doubled knot of eternity;

symmetrical in sleep,

but steeped in poison, waiting

for the first king to wake.