The Man Asleep

Life, look out
This man asleep
Is walking a dream
His pulse, afraid of inimical things, dance
At the incoherent din of the cattle bell,
For he knows only the time of tommorow
Prophesied by blind sages
Sages left by the world to marinate in old age
And he carries it; the cattle bell, it’s dead weight, it’s rue weight, like a talisman
Through the thick fog of promises
To the other side, where the light, yet unseen, seems to shine differently
For the sages who have looked on the winter
From far, would know something of the snow
Or so he hoped, with his face coddled within the blinkers
And crowned with a horseshoe

Life, look out
The man asleep
Knows not that he is sleeping
And so as waves he worship the shore
Unaware that he stands with men
Too afraid to blink at the sea
And soon he too would be watching the waters
Shiver with each breath of the seagull
Till his own wings wither and rot away
Leaving him; this epileptic Icarus
A common man among the common men
Left to watch each sunrise
And every sunset
From the shade of a dry sacamore
The hinterland of heart
That burned in winter
Knows both fire and ice is the same;
Perhaps, in the slow dance of the dying fire
He seeks the heat some more
Perhaps, his dreams are dreams of a dream
He dreamt he has dreamt before…