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Poems

June 2002

Sleeping in the open

by Christian Wiman

The touch that for one moment seemed
Her touch recovered in his dream

Is as he wakes only the wind
Moving over his bare skin

And through the single towering tree
That seems to rouse, seems a body

Responding and subsiding now
As if the years had taught it how

To be both taken and to stay
By giving inward and away

Whenever stirred by a real wind.
Even the strongest of them end.

Christian Wiman


Christian Wimans most recent book is Every Riven Thing (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
more from this author


This article originally appeared in The New Criterion, Volume 20 June 2002, on page 49
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