Committee Meeting

There is something important to say,

I know and then I instantly forget.

I forget everything but remember I have forgotten.

I see what I have lost, but still I lose it.

The present thins

into a sleep so fragile it can't screen

daylight; it is an alabaster sleep,

or porcelain. Tiny shepherdesses

like animated china figurines

prance round and round the narrow band between

rival agendas-call them sun and bone,

or simply out and in.

For such performances the human skull

is an arena, not the inky well

down which one must reach deep

to pull up dreams wet, naked, and intact

out of the secret black.

This Monday the opponents duke it out

confusedly through muslin folds of sleep,

each voluble in its own dialect:

administration, policy, criteria

versus desire, memory, regret,

the battle raging while my eyes are shut.