night thoughts: baby and demon by gwen harwood

[unwinding.livejournal.com]

i wanted to write an introduction to this poem that went something along the lines of, "i never dreamed poetry could be like this until-"

everything i wrote seemed trite and inadequate. please read.



Baby I'm sick. I need
nursing. Give me your breast.
My orfices bleed.
I cannot sleep. My chest
shakes like a window. Light
guts me. My head's not right

Demon we're old, old chap.
Born under the same sign
after some classic rape.
Gemini. Yours is mine.
sickness and health. We'll share
the end of this affair.

Baby I'm sick to death.
But I can't die. You do
the songs. You've got the breath.
Give them the old soft shoe.
Put on a lovely show.
Put on your wig, and go.

The service station flags, denticulate
plastic, snap in the wind. Hunched seabirds wait
for light to quench the unmeaning lights of town.
This day will bring the fabulous summer down.

Weather no memory can match will fade
to memory, lead drift in the pines' thick shade.

All night salt water stroked and shaped the sand.
All night I heard it. Your bravura hand

chimed me to shores beyond times' rocking swell
The last cars to leave the shabby beach motel.

Lovers and drunks unroofed in sobering air
disperse, ghost coloured in the streetlight glare.

      Rock-a-bye baby
      In the motel
      Baby will kiss
      Demon will tell

One candle lights us. Nights cool airs begin
to lick the luminous edges of our skin.

      When the bough bends
      The apple will fall
      Baby knows nothing
      Demon knows all.

Draw up the voluptously crumpled sheet.
In rose dark silence gentle tongues repeat
The body's triumph through it's grand eclipse.
I feel your pulse beat through my finger tips.

      Baby's a rocker
      lost on the shore
      Demon's a mocker
      Baby's a whore

World of the happy, innocent and whole.
the body's the best picture of the soul
couched like an animal in savage grace
Ghost after ghost obscures your sleeping face

My baby's like a bird of day
that flutters from my side,
My baby's like an empty beach
That's ravished by the tide.

So fair are you my bonny lass,
so sick and strange am I.
That I must lie with all your loves
and suck your sweetness dry.

And drink your juices dry, my dear,
and find you grain by grain
and build your body bone by bone
and flesh those bones again

With flesh from all your loves, my love,
With tides and seasons stream,
Until you wake by candle light
from your midsummer dream,

And like come gentle creature meet
The huntsman's murderous eye,
and know you never shall escape
however fast you fly.

Unhoused I'll shout my drunken songs
and through the streets I'll go
compelling all I meet to toast
The bride they do not know.

Till all your tears are dry, my love,
and your ghosts fade in the sun
Be sure I'll have your heart, my love,
when all your loving's done.

Comments

[ginpoet.livejournal.com]

This is a knockout! I love how it comes into rhyme at the end, as if needing control. It's amazing!