The logic of sleep tells me I can see without eyes,
insists I abandon measurement and calculation.

Where’s the blown-glass mirror to show each other
what we both fear, what we sing to disprove?

The sun is fierce over the slum of Kibera
and the iron roofs wrinkle into eyelids
sleepily tilting over damp mud walls.

In the first place they would sustain themselves
on warm, sugary drink, as they imagine herons
and kingfishers do—confusing bodily elegance.

One would give emeralds
for what was not bought from the pear man
who stood in hot, blank sunlight

Dull skies descended to empty hilltops
and ordinary seabirds paddled towards
the opposite bank of a glimmerless river.

“So this is it, experience,” I thought,
lugging tin buckets from the ice machines
to rooms of real adults, with cigarettes

Hudsons and Studebakers ruled the streets,
a crossing guard and teenagers the pavement
when I was eight. But that was an improvement

The beds are always made, and bright hallways
veer off like lanes, looking for canals to leap
across in a white arch, and the stairs rise

You describe a crocodile in a lake, an anchor sunk