The Girl Who Slept For Scotland

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

The girl who slept for Scotland