Poem by Robert Lowell

Night Sweat

Work-table, litter, books and standing lamp,
plain things, my stalled equipment, the old broom---
but I am living in a tidied room,
for ten nights now I've felt the creeping damp
float over my pajamas' wilted white . . .
Sweet salt embalms me and my head is wet,
everything streams and tells me this is right;
my life's fever is soaking in night sweat---
one life, one writing! But the downward glide
and bias of existing wrings us dry---
always inside me is the child who died,
always inside me is his will to die---
one universe, one body . . . in this urn
the animal night sweats of the spirit burn.
Behind me! You! Again I feel the light
lighten my leaded eyelids, while the gray
skulled horses whinny for the soot of night.
I dabble in the dapple of the day,
a heap of wet clothes, seamy, shivering,
I see my flesh and bedding washed with light,
my child exploding into dynamite,
my wife . . . your lightness alters everything,
and tears the black web from the spider's sack,
as your heart hops and flutters like a hare.
Poor turtle, tortoise, if I cannot clear
the surface of these troubled waters here,
absolve me, help me, Dear Heart, as you bear
this world's dead weight and cycle on your back.

1. The Drunken Fisherman
2. To Speak of Woe That Is in Marriage
3. Children of Light
4. Waking in the Blue
5. Dolphin

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