The poem
I want to sleep the dream of the apples, to withdraw from the tumult of cemetries. I want to sleep the dream of that child who wanted to cut his heart on the high seas.
I don't want to hear again that the dead do not lose their blood, that the putrid mouth goes on asking for water. I don't want to learn of the tortures of the grass, nor of the moon with a serpent's mouth that labors before dawn.
I want to sleep awhile, awhile, a minute, a century; but all must know that I have not died; that there is a stable of gold in my lips; that I am the small friend of the wind; that I am the intense shadows of my tears.
Cover me at dawn with a veil, because dawn will throw fistfuls of ants at me, and wet with hard water my shoes so that the pincers of the scorpion slide.
For I want to sleep the dream of the apples, to learn a lament that will cleanse me to earth; for I want to live with that dark child who wanted to cut his heart on the high seas.
Oh, how I have loved this poem for years now and everytime I return to it, it seems new to me and even unfamiliar.
Is this Robert Bly's translation? I would think he'd be very upset that the 3rd stanza is written incorrectly here as "West wing".
It should be "wind" and there's a big difference.