I

Why can't the sun spray the blue sky sea with paint, or put on its frock and mix up its paints and paint me a morning?
Take your brushes, Sun, and sweep them across my sky-canvas.
Wake up my darkness and make it sing to me. Give it a voice.
Give it words to paint across my eyes and give me eyes to watch you at your work. Give me ears to hear your song.

II

The rivers run with the spring, but I do not know it.
The waves crash and fall back on themselves, but without me.
Send me down a crashing waterfall that’s doubled over laughing at its own joke.
Wrap me up in a singing blanket of water droplets. Push me off and do not save me from the thunderstorm of noise.
I do not hear its call.
Teach me what it says.

III

Unbind my hands so they can grope around like normal hands.
Cut my chains. Set me loose to feel a hammer hitting nails, to feel a splinter in my fingertips and in my chest.
Somewhere, a beat, beat, beat is trapped
where all unbeating heartbeats go.

Burn me alive, Sun, and teach me what it means to hurt again.
Tall Mountains, crush me with every ounce of rock you have.
Make me feel what it was to cry again.
I want to live.

IV

Honeysuckle blowing in a southerly, drifting breeze—
how come they say you stole a perfume from the wind?
Why can’t I drink in your champagne or drown in your yellow, springtime laughter?
Raise me up just this once to lift a toast to you.
Make me remember what I should never have forgotten,
Remind me of what it was like, and how it was before.

V

Make me a banquet of food.
Cook up a feast.
Lay out the breads.
Pour me the wines.
We used to eat and drink together, didn’t we? Yes—I remember that.

VI

Open my eyes. Let me look and see the world how I knew it before, if it hasn’t changed.
Or show me a new world, if I’ve been gone long.
Let me hear the spring chirping and roaring through the valleys.
Give me a stone to hold. Let me touch it. Let me crush it to a silver powder in my pale hands.
Let me breathe in the deep blue atmosphere and smell the setting of the sun.

Revive me from this darkness—give me light—
Wake me up and tell me who I am.