Lullaby

Daqui

It is a summer evening.

The yellow moths sag

against the locked screens

and the faded curtains

suck over the window sills

and from another building

a goat calls in his dreams.

This is the TV parlor

in the best ward at Bedlam.

The night nurse is passing

out the evening pills.

She walks on two erasers,

padding by us one by one.

My sleeping pill is white.

It is a splendid pearl;

it floats me out of myself,

my stung skin as alien

as a loose bolt of cloth.

I will ignore the bed.

I am linen on a shelf.

Let the others moan in secret;

let each lost butterfly

go home. Old woolen head,

take me like a yellow moth

while the goat calls hush-

a-bye.

Anne Sexton