Poetry and Sleep

Hyper Somnolence

Sleeping Passenger on a Wild Road
Norman MacCaig

When the dark lurches, or the car does, I
Am jolted from sleep to see our lights leap wildly
Up, down, across a hidden landscape: or
They soar and drain to nothing in the sky.

I grunt from symbols, wedge my chin and feel
Towards a more hidden landscape.  Stones ping loudly
From pinching tyres.  A pale hand draws small arcs
Whose circle is an invisible steering wheel.

Now, so flowed through by motion I am it,
I am all forward, I am all swerving blindly,
An abstract passage, bodiless going, till
A stillness soaks me inwards, bit by bit.

And I am hulk: luggage in space…But head
Hangs from a thin stalk, head is hard and heavy.
The road bucks and I see through rainbow lids
A startled house jump, starting, from its bed.

on top

 

Night Watch
Peter Davison

Behind the sooty hill a violet sky
turns purple as the earth vanishes.
House-finches, nuthatches drop their suet
to wing for the woods.
The last of the daytime gulls have flapped away
to outer, colder islands.
In the who-hours an owl, downpasture,
breathes its wicked song from the pear-tree.

Tomorrow, many wakeful hours away,
when the sun singles out the feeding station,
faded goldfinch, chickadee, grosbeak and titmouse
will already have come from the woods.
The night-warmed dog will be whimpering
once again for the truth of open air.
Gravid sheep, restless, cramped
after their huge night in the black barn,
will be crowding gate of their pen,
edging one another aside
tom make a break when the gate swings.

What else is there to expect?
Things, beasts, want out, want in.
Behind those curtains can she still be sleeping?

on top

 

Sleeping
John Fuller

The princess was baptised inside a shell,
Nude, adult, rich and handsome, but a bitch.
Small wonder she refused to ask that witch
Who scuttled lecherous tars, dried up a well
That poisoned villagers, silenced the bell
Of the smug church and moved fat squashy cows
Whole fields away to give a poor man’s house
Milk for a day!  Really, one just can’t tell
This story after all the palace lies.
She simply cursed.  The princess sighed, and rust
Crumbled the pantry lock.  The king yawned.  Flies
Settled on footmen turned to snoring dust.
Churls grinned.  Till through them, too, there
flowed the deep
And uncontrollable desire to sleep.

on top

 

Pretending to be Awake
Peter Davison

I am disgusted by the earthworks of my protection.
The clothes stink that curtain my nakedness,
and beneath the wool my flesh is beginning to fester.
I must tease my life awake that now lies sleeping.

Other stay awake in the dark by laceration.
By thrashing out at workers, lovers, children,
To keep their ears alert to the sound of sorrow.

Some plunge into the tolerance of women
Or paralyze the tendrils of their brains
Desiring visions beyond sleep or waking.
If I could tempt this sleeping life awake!
It shuns me now that sometime did me seek.

on top

 

‘Let not the Sluggish Sleep’
Anonymous
Printed 1611-1651

Let not the sluggish sleep
Close up thy waking eye,
Until with judgment deep
Thy daily deeds thou try.

He that one sin in conscience keeps
When he to quiet goes,
More venturous is than he that sleeps
With twenty mortal foes.

on top

 

One Desiring Me to Read, but Slept it Out, Wakening
George Daniel
1616-1657

Nay do not smile: my lips shall rather dwell
For ever on my pipe
Than read to you one word of syllable.
You are not ripe
To judge or apprehend
Of wit.  I’ll rather spend
Six hours together in tobacco-taking,
Than read to you, and cannot keep you waking.

on top

 

« Back to Sleep and Poetry page

 
© 2010 - 2024 Toronto Sleep Clinics, Ontario Sleep Clinics. All rights reserved.