Striking a Balance

My desk heavy with ciphers,
I hear the house dreaming.
In the next room

My children’s monkeys and bears,
Sprawling at startled angles,
Sleep with eyes open;

They look through the walls
And watch me learning to count.
For, though the midnight

Is huge at the screen, flooding
The room with vague rhetoric, still,
According to schedule

The moon steps over the tree, and bows
Gracefully through clouds, moving
The tides of money.

I float like a juggler, spinning,
Bouncing invisible dollars,
Drawing checks on the dark,

Balancing the high cumulus
Of monthly bills on the dull point
Of a dwindling deposit,

Balancing the whole heaven of meaning
Against my fraction that approaches
Tomorrow’s zero.

The moon has set and the Pleiades;
How does a man move with the light
And stay still at the center?

A hundred books, each dead
With the wit of a master,
Lean from their shelves,

Whispering to me in unison
Their equidistant answers.
The walls come closer;

The world is so contracted,
A gnat would stifle in it;
Now the stars are down,

The gentlest dewdrop, wrapped
In the pink and green of sunrise,
Is convulsed by the need

To kick in all directions
Like an undisciplined grain
Of dingy mustard.

To purge this taste from my pores
I make for the shower:
It is time to shave off

The grisly whiskers of darkness,
To unwind the night watch,
To break fast;

Dawn fingers the house,
Searching the curtains,
Changing the chairs.

Suddenly the children’s voices
Wake up like birds; the cat
Uncoils herself;

My wife’s yawn spreads slowly to
A smile; it is time to scrub,
To eat oatmeal;

To consider how to repair
The rust in the fender, and relish
Tomorrow’s birthday.

Rejoicing like a bridegroom, the sun,
Apollo, that prosperous banker,
Physician, and priest,

Is back in business, calm as a statue,
Lending his world of gold on terms
That are clear as daylight.