Roger Mitchell

Poem with a Boy on a Bus

I want to wake up from something like sleep—

something in which the events of sleep,

which move too fast to be seen, mingle freely

with the knowledge that I am not asleep—

and read a poem I remember reading somewhere

about a boy sleeping on a bus in Madrid,

on a bus going away from Madrid, actually,

out into the Spanish countryside at night,

countryside I've never seen, filled with night,

another country I've seen little of,

and write a poem no one understands,

that moves too fast to be understood,

that thinks understanding is a color

or an aromatic soap, that understanding

may be what the grass does all summer long

or light putting itself down slowly toward the end of day.

On the far side of the mountain, someone

is writing a sentence that has neither beginning,

middle nor end. He sits by the window and lets

the sun look over his shoulder. In the words

are the meanings of the words, but he prefers

to rub them together. That way, they murmur

things they would never understand, or need to.