I
Every night he meets his family: is crumpled with his sisters
In a cellar, or watches as his niece becomes
Smaller and smaller until she disappears.

He hides boxes from his mother
That holds the bones of elephants, a warrant for arrest,
The shirts of her own buried father.

Caught either in scenarios of rescue, or with some
Bear-trap which he's used to trap and kill a man
In Mexico, he knows the man's his brother.

II
Awake, he never phones or writes
And seems so far away in life and mind
From where they are. Amnesia would be kinder -

Instead he wants to be a lucid dreamer, to enter
Whatever sea of fear and fever
Awaits him when he falls. He wants to change the colour
...