Sleep
Rita Banerjee
What does it mean to be so still?
to glide along the ocean floor
like some black-tongued electric eel,
to burn through marbled gold and green
of oceanic things like some
compact mass deforming space, time,
a void within voids, and then?
It is easier to imagine amphibian,
to know that blood, too, can change
its temperament as quickly as
salamanders change skin, as quickly as
eyes of newt and tongues of dog become
incantations, enchantments of art
and life just as an animal submerged
under water becomes unknown,
just as respirations become primitive
and breaths and motions cease
as a lone fish in a dark pond
arrives as an object of thought
and becomes stone.
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