The Bed
C. K. Williams

Beds squalling, squealing, muffled in hush; beds pitching, leaping,
      immobile as mountains;
beds wide as a prairie, strait as a gate, as narrow as the plank of a ship
      to be walked.

I squalled, I squealed, I swooped and pitched; I covered my eyes and  
      leapt from the plank.

Beds proud, beds preening, beds timid and tense; vanquished beds
      wishing only to vanquish;
neat little beds barely scented and dented, beds so disused you
      cranked them to start them.

I admired, sang praises, flattered, adored; I sighed and submitted,
      solaced, comforted, cranked.

Procrustean beds with consciences sharpened like razors slicing the
      darkness above you;
beds like the labors of Hercules, stables and serpents; Samson blinded,
      Noah in horror.

Blind with desire, I wakened in horror, in toil, in bondage, my con
      science in tatters.

Beds sobbing, beds sorry, beds pleading, beds mournful with histories
      that amplified yours,
so you knelled through their dolorous echoes as through the depths of
        your own dementias.

I echoed, I knelled, I sobbed and repented, I bandaged the wrists,
        sighed for the embryo lost.

A nation of beds, a cosmos, then, how could it happen still, the bed at
        the end of the world,
as welcoming as the world, ark, fortress, light and delight, the other
        beds forgiven, forgiving.

A bed that sang through the darkness and woke in song as though
        world itself had just wakened;
two beds fitted together as one, bed of arrival, acceptance, patience,
        bed of unwaning ardor.

(Reprinted in Best American Poetry 1998)

Ontario Review #45