Poetry and Sleep
NPT Test
An Irish Marriage Night
Frank O’Connor
A starved old gelding, blind and lamed
and a twenty-year-old with her parts untamed.
It wasn’t her fault if things went wrong,
She closed her eyes and held her tongue
She was no ignorant girl from school
To whine for her mother and play the fool
But a competent bedmate smooth and warm
Who cushioned him like a sheaf of corn.
Line by line she bad him linger
With gummy lips and groping finger,
Gripping his thighs in a wild embrace
Rubbing her brush from knee to waist
Stripping him bare to the cold night air,
Everything done with love and care.
But she’d nothing to show for all her labour;
There wasn’t’ a jump in the old deceiver,
And all could say would give no notion
Of that poor distracted girl’s emotion,
Her knees cocked up and the bedposts shaking,
Chattering teeth and sinews aching,
While she sobbed and tossed through a joyless night
And gave it up with the morning light.
How Long and Dreary is the Night
Robert Burns
How long and dreary is the night,
When I am frae my dearie!
I sleepless lie frae e’en to morn,
Tho’ I were ne’er so weary!
When I think on the happy days
I spent wi’ you my dearie:
And now what lands between us lie,
How can I be but eerie!
How slow ye move, ye heavy hours,
As yewere wae and weary!
It was na sae ye glinted by,
When I was wi’ my dearie!
Bridal Song
George Chapman
From The Masque of the Middle Temple and Lincoln’s Inn
Now, Sleep, bind fast the flood of air,
Strike all things dumb and deaf,
And to disturb our nuptial pair
Let stir no aspen leaf.
Send flocks of golden dreams
That all true joys presage;
Bring, in thy oily streams,
The mild-and-honey age.
Now close the world-round sphere of bliss,
And fill it with a heavenly kiss.
One Night
C.P. Cavafy
The room was penurious and common,
Hidden over a disreputable tavern,
The ally could be seen from the window,
Unclean and narrow. From below
Came the voice of a few workmen
Who were playing cards and having a good time.
There on the vulgar on the humble bed
I had the body of love, I had the lips,
The sensuous, the rosy lips of wine,
Rosy with such a wine, that even now
Here as I write, after so many years,
In my solitary house, I am drunk again.
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