A night blacker than Adam’s cat,
a thousand stars firing fiercely,
some misguided winds at rest in a garden …
I often wake before dawn,
made feebleminded with dreams.
I have to tell you, brother,
there are some dark mornings.
Sister, there are darker days
than the absence of light allows.
When we attempt to weigh the stillness
against the noises of living,
driven by visions,
prayer lacking in dimension,
thoughts possessing little bearing—
especially late-night musings
on the qualities of darkness,
what with a kettle on the boil
and the promise of breakfast
with your morning news—
noting the ways of the people,
genuine individuals
who go about their business
and are not damned
and seldom worry.
*
If the night itself could sleep
it would dream of darkness,
the stars very curious
as to the meddlings of Man.
I’m lying beside you,
beside the thought of you,
the idea of what it means
to be with you, to be you.
Bats, moths, owls—
these are your guardians,
our little boat rocking
in the sleep of the sea.
In the dream we share
there’s a glass world
made of love and derring-do.
A world without money,
without arms or fear,
without Death’s ghost
haunting the multifold house
we’ve willfully constructed
with our numberless dream-hands.
Come morning we rise.
We wake and we forget
sleep’s bountiful embraces.
We need to forego the lack
of beauty and grace.
On a planet that nods.
In cities of slumber.
*
Sleep the sleep of false memories.
Enjoy the fleet fame of the comedian,
the gun-nut in love with his hostage,
the mad sexton boiling his shoelaces.
Be an astronaut
made foolish by the stars.
One consulted by politicians
over the necessity for war.
Or future papal assistant.
Walk the walk of failed promise,
an actor touring the lowlands,
a beauty after her acid bath,
a child face-down in a river.
Now I lay me down to sleep,
having experienced copious blood loss.
You’re asking death for a cupful of water,
your name an instrument, but in the wrong hands.
Tonight, lie on the low ground,
an embittered outcast from heaven.
Come to me in your hour of need.
I am your beautiful creature.
*
Sleep is infantilized death.
Oblivion tastes of sleep.
It’s what annihilation smells like,
our reward for daring existence.
Insomniacs daydream of sleep,
seers casting faraway glances
over worlds of blissful repose.
A mind is like a house, sleepwalkers
looking for an exit, for a single door
in a city of many mansions.
A warm breeze pushes through town,
supple rain falling easily on an eye.
The world is rocking gently.
*
Sleep is a comfort, unless you’re dreaming
of jagged clouds or fly from colour
to colour, going clod to clout in the ructions
of fear, a cold hand seeking the familial hearth.
Unless you ride upon a blue swan or magical
carpet, a demon on your one arm and a god
on the other, the wind’s melodramatic music
in the stark tree branches, ice-ghosts dancing
among spruce and fir, the pines aching with
the work of winter, Sunday’s dust gathering
in a narthex, quietude rustling in the vestibule.
Sleep. Unless plagued with fever, the night a clot
of muddled badinage, turning onto your left side,
then onto your right, a wall clock loudly
clicking in a vacant corridor, dreams stuffing
your pillow, sleep a tenant to slumlord night,
a straight line in a land of circles and ovoids,
sleep a hyacinth planted on the side of a hill,
being that which is and that which isn’t.
