Night Visit

You're dreaming

of Cratoids, Armpullers, the Blownose Dragon.

Who knows what Anna Brichtova dreamed about, the girl

who comes looking for us tonight with her mosaic

of colored paper: her house

with its red roof, some trees on a green lawn,

the sky—outside, the concentration camp.

This is the real gift

I brought back from Prague without telling you.

It was with me on the train the morning

I thought I was living in hell: Stuttgart,

or south of there, amid a drone

of people working—they don't know at what

or for whom, but they're working, pressing keys,

sending messages to unknown persons through the air.

Nothing but eyes and fingers, nothing

but one day after the next, interminable

passage of a time that doesn't vary, that belongs

forever to others, to something

outside themselves, and the fear, the hatred

of one pariah for another, this brawl

of lost souls, of new slaves. The Great

Drinker of Beer, the Woman Staring into Space,

Mazinger Z: these were my traveling companions.

Who knows what Anna Brichtova dreamed about,

or what you're dreaming now, or how

you children see the world. Will you find,

among your games, the game that saves us?

It's what we all are hoping

as we watch you sleep.