Some nights it's bound to be your best way out, When nightmare is the short end of the stick, When sleep is a part of town where it's not safe To walk at night, when waking is the only way You have of distancing your wretched dead, A growing crowd, and escaping out of their Time into yours for another little while;
Then pass ghostly, a planet in the house Never observed, among the sleeping rooms Where children dream themselves, and thence go down Into the empty domain where daylight reigned; Reward yourself with drink and a book to read, A mystery, for its elusive gift Of reassurance against the hour of death. Order your heart about: Stop doing that! And get the world to be secular again.
Then, when you know who done it, turn out the light, And quietly in darkness, in moonlight, or snowlight Reflective, listen to the whistling earth In its backspin trajectory around the sun That makes the planets sometimes retrograde And brings the cold forgiveness of the dawn Whose light extinguishes all stars but one.