Ballad of Sleeping Somewhere Else

Jack SpicerDreamy

A Translation for Ebbe Borregaard

The pine needles fall Like an ax in the forest.

Can you hear them crumble There where we are sleeping?

The windows are close to the wall Here in the darkness they remain open.

(When I saw you in the morning My arms were full of paper.)

Five hundred miles away The moon is a hatchet of silver.

(When I saw you in the morning My eyes were full of paper.)

Here the walls are firm They do not crumble and remain certain.

(When I saw you in the morning My heart was full of paper.)

Five hundred miles away The stars are glass that is breaking.

The windows sag on the wall I feel cold glass in the blankets.

Child, you are too tall for this bed.

The pine needles fall Like an ax in the forest.

Can you hear them crumble There where we are sleeping?

Jack Spicer

SourceLicence:Public domain (US, unrenewed)

Mood:: Dreamy
Topics:: moon, pine, window, distance

What is this poem about?

Summary

Spicer's ballad is built on distance. The speaker seems to be somewhere far from the person he loves, and the poem keeps flipping between "here" and "there," or "five hundred miles away," as though he can't quite decide where he really is. The pine needles fall "like an ax," the moon becomes "a hatchet of silver," the stars are "glass that is breaking": the images are gentle things made violent, which gives the quiet night a threatening edge.

The refrain in parentheses is the strangest part. Each time he remembers seeing someone in the morning, something is "full of paper" — first his arms, then his eyes, then his heart. Paper suggests blankness, or words that never quite say anything. Meanwhile the walls "remain certain" while the windows sag, and cold glass turns up in the blankets. The line "Child, you are too tall for this bed" lands softly but sadly, like a note about something outgrown. The poem ends where it began, repeating its question, as if no answer ever comes.

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