City That Does Not Sleep

In the sky there is nobody asleep.  Nobody, nobody.

Nobody is asleep.

The creatures of the moon sniff and prowl about their cabins.

The living iguanas will come and bite the men who do not dream,and the man who rushes out with his spirit broken will meet on the            street cornerthe unbelievable alligator quiet beneath the tender protest of the            stars.

Nobody is asleep on earth.  Nobody, nobody.

Nobody is asleep.

In a graveyard far off there is a corpsewho has moaned for three yearsbecause of a dry countryside on his knee;and that boy they buried this morning cried so muchit was necessary to call out the dogs to keep him quiet.

Life is not a dream.  Careful!  Careful!  Careful!

We fall down the stairs in order to eat the moist earthor we climb to the knife edge of the snow with the voices of the dead            dahlias.

But forgetfulness does not exist, dreams do not exist;flesh exists.  Kisses tie our mouthsin a thicket of new veins,and whoever his pain pains will feel that pain foreverand whoever is afraid of death will carry it on his shoulders.

One day the horses will live in the saloonsand the enraged antswill throw themselves on the yellow skies that take refuge in the            eyes of cows.

Another daywe will watch the preserved butterflies rise from the deadand still walking through a country of gray sponges and silent boatswe will watch our ring flash and roses spring from our tongue.

Careful!  Be careful!  Be careful!

The men who still have marks of the claw and the thunderstorm,and that boy who cries because he has never heard of the invention            of the bridge,or that dead man who possesses now only his head and a shoe,we must carry them to the wall where the iguanas and the snakes            are waiting,where the bear's teeth are waiting,where the mummified hand of the boy is waiting,and the hair of the camel stands on end with a violent blue shudder.

Nobody is sleeping in the sky.  Nobody, nobody.

Nobody is sleeping.

If someone does close his eyes,a whip, boys, a whip!

Let there be a landscape of open eyesand bitter wounds on fire.

No one is sleeping in this world.  No one, no one.

I have said it before.

No one is sleeping.

But if someone grows too much moss on his temples during the            night,open the stage trapdoors so he can see in the moonlightthe lying goblets, and the poison, and the skull of the t