The Other always stays away
on Mondays. The child listening to a voice
through a tin can on a long string
warping time from other planets in other galaxies.

The poem whistles rudely, coughs,
says there must be an end to this
fumbling about in our sleep, searching for
a child who has died but has not ceased to be.

The poem’s blind. But that’s the point, after all,
of language. It rides down the middle ground
ignoring traffic, screaming from the windows,
something about its efforts at survival.

Can you make out what it says? It accuses
all of us, wanting to scale things down
to the possible, to find a hiding place
where the child remembers what was in his head.

But not how the day began or ended.
Things always emerge as rough adults, with eyes
blank and milky. Enough to be awakened by
this face, pulled on like a well-worn cap.