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Poetry and Sleep
Shift Work
The Last Shift
W.W. Gibson (1878-1962)
The gate clangs and the nightshift cage descends;
And, with eyes closed against the dust and grit
That swirl up in the draught, into the pit
Once more he drops, he, with his boyhood’s friends,
Old mates and cronies now this many a year,
Packed close about him; and thinking, too, maybe,
Of their sons serving in the war, as he,
Of his own lad. For, as the drop down sheer,
Down, down and down, a thousand feet or more,
Down, down and down and down into the black
and tortuous entrails of the earth, young Jack,
A pilot since the outbreak of the war,
Happen, even now, is climbing three miles high
Or thrice three miles, up, up into the rare
And icy upper reaches of the air,
Up, up and up into the brilliant night
To tackle enemy squadrons, bearing down
To pound with death some sleepy English town—
Jack, soaring through thin air in flashing flight,
As into the think closeness of he earth
His father drops, to work nightlong and hew
The coal. Jack, fighting…
Yet, maybe, it’s true
His own work, too, is fighting : for a dearth
Of fuel for the machines, without a doubt,
Would lose the war for us. Ay, sure enough,
Even planes could never soar unless the stuff,
Metal and coal to smelt it, were dug out
Of earth’s black bowels by such men as he
The miner-sons of miners, who know the trick
Of handling tools, cutter and wedge and pick,
Almost by instinct.
And now suddenly
As the shaft-foot the cage stops with a jerk
Beside the lamproom, and he takes his lamp,
Burnished and newly-tested against blackdamp;
Then mounts a tub to rattle to his work
Over the jolting trolley-rails and ride
Six miles or so along a gallery,
Long stript of coal, to where, beneath the sea,
Still richly-loaded measures run—the tide
Sweeping and surging in a welter of white
Far overhead, the island-circling deep
Where restless trawlers and destroyers keep
Unwinking watch throughout the livelong night…
And over them, the sky where, full of pluck,
Jack fights!
Nay, he must not let his mind run
On suchlike thoughts! Jack is their only son;
But jack, as other men, must take his luck.
And, even in the pit… where should he be,
Himself, if he let his thoughts loose, sniffing all
The risks, the hundred things that might befall?
Life, at the best, was chancey : though, certainly,
war has increased the hazards : and even his wife,
Lying now sung in bed, god knows what might
Drop down on her from out of the clear night!
But he could not let his thoughts… and such was
life
For all of us in these days; everywhere
Folk faced such hazards, knowing that each breath
Might be their last: ay, all hobnobbed with death,
Hail-fellow-well-met! By sea or land or air
‘Twas strange to-night, through, how his thoughts had
run
on dangers. Ay, and reaching the pithead,
he had felt like turning back again, instead
of stepping into the cage as he had done
so often without giving it a thought,
as if he fancied he might break his neck!
And, taking his lamp and handing in his check
To the lampman, old Dick Dodd, he had even caught
Himself out, muttering ‘So long!’ to him,
As through he would not see his old mug again,
Or cared much if he didn’t ! it was plain,
Plain as Dick’s mug—and that was something grim—
His wits…
His wife slept snug—Jack, overhead,
A red-haired guardian angel on the alert!
And, likely enough neither would come to hurt
To-night: and in the morning from her bed
His wife would rise as usual. For no wars
Could keep down Susan, always game an gay
To get things done. Even the Judgement Day
Would likely find her singing at her chores.
Ay, she would rise as usual to prepare
His breakfast and his tub and set things straight,
Against his coming. She was never late;
And h would always find things fair and square
On his return from the pit.
And, as for Jack—
His folk had been pitfolk time out of mind;
And it took something special to down that kind
Or get them windy, even when things looked black.
Hazard was in their blood. They lived on risk,
And relished it, or took it as it came.
And now he hears somebody shout his name
Above the racket of the tub; and brisk
And sharp he turns to answer an old jest—
He, always more than a match for anyone
When it came to ragging—while the trucks still rn
Through the low dripping dusk, to come to rest,
Reaching their journey’s end, with squealing brakes.
Then, nimbler yet than any, down he leaps;
And, scrambling over rocks and coaldust heaps,
And splashing through black puddles, now he takes
His way yet further along the narrow seam;
Stooping yet lower as the roof slopes down,
Rock-studded, threatening to crack his crown,
For all his leather cap; and wades a stream
That trickles from a rift in the coal-face.
Then, nigh on hands and knees, ‘twixt closing walls
Into a three-foot seam he slowly crawls
And by his own coalcutter takes his place.
Crouched all night long, he works with aching bones,
Half-blind with dust and sweat: while all around
He hears the pit ‘talk’ as the stresses shift
And cutters grinding with harsh rasping sound,
While now and then a rattle of falling stones
Strikes sharply in his ear. Throughout the night
His thoughts are with his folk—his wife, asleep,
He trusts, in well-earned slumber, snug and deep;
And jack, above the clouds in reckless flight.
All night he works till, as the shift at last
Draws to an end, the cutter jams; and now,
Stopping to wipe a trickle from his brow,
He hears a long low rumble down the drift
That thunders nearer and nearer…roof and walls
Heave all about him, cracking… blast on blast
Shatters his world for him…till gradually
A dreadful quiet settles; and , by falls
Of rock cut off from life, he finds himself,
Together with his old mates, Bill and Joe,
Half-stifled, blind and dazed, as they crouch low,
Huddled in darkness on a narrow shelf.
Speechless they crouch through an eternity;
Then, chuckling brokenly, he mutters ‘Come, Bill,
Let’s clear our throats and turn a tune, until
They find us—and you, Joe! What shall it be?
Come, lads, pipe up! And happen, they may hear,
And reach us easier’. Huskily, ‘The Keel Row’
He starts; then, shyly joined by Bill and Joe,
His voice through the hot dark rings true and clear.
Lullaby
W.H. Auden
Lay your sleeping head, my love,
Human on my faithless arm;
Time and fevers burn away
Individual beauty from
Thoughtful children, and the grave
Proves the child ephemeral:
But in my arms till break of day
Let the living creature lie,
Mortal, guilty, but to me
The entirely beautiful.
Soul and body have no bounds:
To lovers as they lie upon
Her tolerant enchanted slope
In their ordinary swoon,
Grave the vision Venus sends
Of Supernatural sympathy,
Universal love and hope;
While an abstract insight wakes
Among the glaciers and the rocks
The hermit’s carnal ecstasy.
Certainty, fidelity
On the stroke of midnight pass
Like vibrations of a bell
And fashionable madmen raise
Their pedantic boring cry:
Every farthing of the cost,
All the dreaded cards foretell,
Shall be paid, but for this night
Not a whisper, not a thought,
Not a kiss nor look be lost.
Beauty, midnight, vision dies:
Let the winds of dawn that blow
Softly round your dreaming head
Such a day of welcome show
Eye and knocking heart may bless,
Find our mortal world enough;
Noons of dryness find you fed
By the involuntary powers,
Nights of insult let you pass
Whatched by every human love.
The Early Morning
Hilaire Belloc
The moon on the one hand, the dawn on the other:
The moon is my sister, the dawn is my brother.
The moon on my left hand and the dawn of my right.
My brother, good morning: my sister, good night.
Rhapsody on a Windy Night
T.S. Eliot
Twelve o’clock
Along the reaches of the street
Held in a lunar synthesis,
Whispering lunar incantations
Dissolve the floors of memory
And all its clear relations,
Its divisions and precisions.
Every street lamp that I pass
Beats like a fatalistic drum,
And through the spaces of the dark
Midnight shakes the memory
As a madman shakes a dead geranium.
Half-past one,
The street-lamp sputtered,
The street-lamp muttered,
The street-lamp said, “Regard that woman
Who hesitates towards you in the light of the door
Which opens on her like a grin.
You see the border of her dress
Is torn and stained with sand,
And you see the corner of her eye
Twists like a crooked pin.”
The memory throws up high and dry
A crowd of twisted things;
A twisted branch upon the beach
Eaten smooth, and polished
As if the world gave p
The secret of its skeleton,
Stiff and white.
A broken spring in a factory yard,
Rust that clings to the form that the strength has left
Hard and curled and ready to snap.
Half-past two,
The street-lamp said,
“Remark the cat which flattens itself in the gutter,
Slips out its tongue
And devours a morsel of rancid butter.”
So the hand of the child, automatic,
Slipped out and pocketed a toy that was running along the quay,
I could see nothing behind that child’s eye.
I have seen eyes in the street
Trying to peer through lighted shutters,
And a crab one afternoon in a pool,
An old crab with barnacles on his back,
Gripped the end of a stick which I held him.
Half-past three,
The lamp sputtered,
The lamp muttered in the dark.
The lamp hummed:
“Regard the moon,
La lune ne garde aucune rancune,
She winks a feeble eye,
She smiles into corners.
She smooths the hair of the grass.
The moon has lost her memory.
A washed-out smallpox cracks her face,
Her hand twists a paper rose,
That smells of dust and eau de Cologne,
She is alone
With all the old nocturnal smells
That cross and cross across her brain”
The reminiscence comes
Of sunless dry geraniums
And dust in crevices,
Smells of chestnuts in the streets,
And female smells in shuttered rooms,
And cigarettes in corridors
And cocktail smells in bars.
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