robert dickerson - 2 a.m. Lullaby

Why, lowing dove, do you crouch alone
feeding your chant to the ear of night
blending your complaint with diesal drone
freezing your tail in the imminent light
on some chilly wire, when you should be sleeping tight?

Do the sirens of the city keep you awake?
Are you sick? Does a fever wrack your sleep?
Is it that medicine you take?
or have you found no love to hold and keep
in the chute of Night, so still and dark and deep?

Never in all that vast and brooding chute-
combed with chambers, candlelit,
aflutter with wings and quick, pink feet
savage beak and irid throat-
Not even in that domed and teeming cote?

Mornning will come, don't you fret, my dear,
drowning those few stars in tides of gold
bearing new caravels, hour by hour,
dockets and duties a thousandfold-
promises of Spring and fortunes yet untold-

and, who knows, but that, warm, thick balm
some dropp of sleep might yet dropp down
glistening and wet becalm
our burning lids and fever drown
like Peace, unhoped for and without a sound.

robert dickerson

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/2-a-m-lullaby/