Echoes

Day-long I hear life's sounds beat like the sea;
Day-long, day-long
They sweep their deep tide-rhythms over me,
And as a song
Reiterated, fall unmeaningly.

Where once I bent life's echoes to my will,
Day after day
Following wings of sound over the sill
Far, far away,
Now my sick fancy lies inert and still.

Silence that slowly wraps me with the ease
Of dreamed-out sleep,
Quenches the sound of vague realities
Whose echoes keep
Their rhythms like old winds in drying seas.