Weldon Kees

Here you will find the Poem Girl At Midnight of poet Weldon Kees

Girl At Midnight

Then walk the floor, or twist upon your bed 
While bullets, cold and blind, rush backward from the target?s eye, 
And say, ?I will not dream that dream again. I will not dream 
Of long-spent whispers vanishing down corridors 
That turn through buildings I have never known; 
The snap of rubber gloves; the tall child, blind, 
Who calls my name; the stained sheets 
Of another girl. And then a low bell, 
Sounding through shadows in the cold, 
Disturbs the screen that is my mind in sleep. 


??Your face is never clear. You always stand 
In charcoal doorways in the dark. Part of your face 
is gone. You say, `Just to be through with this damned world. 
Contagious fogs blow in. Christ, we could die 
The way deer sometimes do, their antlers locked, 
Rotting in snow.? 
?And I can never speak. 
But have I ever told the truth to you? 
I did not ask for this; a new disease threads in. 
I want your lips upon my lips, your mouth 
Upon my breasts, again, again, again, again; 
I want the morning filled with sun. 


?But I must dream once more of cities burned away, 
Corrupted wood, and silence on the piers. 
Love is a sickroom with the roof half gone 
Where nights go down in a continual rain. 


Heart, heart. I do not live. The lie of peace 
Echoes to no end; the clocks are dead. 
What we have had we will not have again.?