Lullaby

It is a summer evening. The yellow moths sag against the locked screens and the faded curtains suck over the window sills and from another building a goat calls in his dreams. This is the TV parlor in the best ward at Bedlam. The night nurse is passing out the evening pills. She walks on two erasers, padding by us one by one. My sleeping pill is white. It is a splendid pearl; it floats me out of myself, my stung skin as alien as a loose bolt of cloth. I will ignore the bed. I am linen on a shelf. Let the others moan in secret; let each lost butterfly go home. Old woolen head, take me like a yellow moth while the goat calls hush-a-bye.