Since very soon it is required of you.
Even here, on this bed, your face turned up and away,
a strong statue’s face turning up and away,
the spangled eye staring live and away.
And the call comes :Open and now obey.

Now it is coming from a roomful of cats,
the dead man on the cot, desert outside,
mesa and goldmine around a tombstone town.
The cat flies shouting from the dead man’s mouth.
News of the world :Open and now obey.

Now it is coming during the major climax, 
when the brain is surprised and singing only medley.
Or in the meeting. Or at lunch around the rink
with the stranger and the stories of Libyan maneuvers,
horror’s imperative the heart obeys.

When they ask you What were you doing at that hour.
When the headlines predicted it What street did you walk down?
When they insist Prove yourself alive that afternoon
It was coming then And everybody saw it
Your life pointed to that That was your world

I think of effort. Brought us to birth in force.
Noguchi’s mother with her scalded child
wedged her awake with splinters in the eyes.
If you are falling fallen failing, force 
will suffice, must fix yourself alert.

Sleeping, I saw awake a widened world.
I saw a well full of men’s eyes that weep,
wrong ghosts sailing the cities praised our night,
but effort of light comes, overflow morning
waking no weeping, the series of twelve doors
strike shut like clock, but my light will not go;
woke. Love, we’ll stay awake until it’s healed,
until the time is brought to a fair hour,
obey the heart that calls to prove alive
a love, an age, all soldiers home again,
the growing time a child up and alive,
until the world is done.