I tried to sleep upon my back so I could hold her all night long as in my arms she slept, alas, but no I couldn’t and when daybreak came and found her at the far side of the bed I tried to wake her, tried to stir her, but she wouldn’t In her fug she lay like someone dead and even when I’d tug her head and press and nip and agitate and shake her or call her name or whisper it against her ear, my breath warm, there were no words in this universe would wake her
The girl who slept for Scotland
It took me time to comprehend this state of play extended unto all her working, waking, shaking hours for when she finally woke, deep in the day still she did sleepwalk like a hollow ghost a-float in haunted towers and though she heard she didn’t see and though she saw she didn’t hear, attending only to what seemed precise and kind for she was settled in her dream, a shopping list of small illusions, pretty stories that she told her drowsy mind
The girl who slept for Scotland
Yet I remember a day by a river wild when she clung to me hard like a darling child And a night in the sheets of a Dublin bed when she moaned like a woman and gave sweet head when we sang in tongues together and our synchronised guitars played music to the rafters made love among the stars and our bodies beat like light in love’s bold embrace as her tiny kisses burst like popping suns around my face
but then drift, recline, collapse, the lights went out, she fell asleep again before my kiss-wet face was even dry I need another haircut she’d say, talking in her sleep, the sleep-motes gathered in the dust-bowls of her eye she teetered down the road apiece, she and her man, from dozy bedsit land to junkshop, with her sleeping clothes in sacks and when I’d gone she teetered down the road again, yawning as she went, and went and brought the bloody damn things back