Sleep If You Can
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- Sleep If You Can
Sleep, if you can,A deep sleep over waters,We never dreamed of this,Is it early or late?There is a noonday brightness,I keep company with the dragonAnd drink with him in the summer afternoons.
O captain Soleil,She is a being dropped from the clouds,I love every name that is the same as hers,The early orchids and red campions,The old earth was blackened many times for her,How can you speak of the dead, and yet be the interpreter of the living?
We sail out into the sea,This little life—with one eye closed—This life will tranche your eye,Clinker and scoria, the glassy skin of earth,Snow whitening snow—it stirs the lees in me—Old ichor of my secret places,I have a right to be blind, sir,The whole country is on fire, and my eye is blood.
She shall sleep, her spices on the stream,She is low, the ice has formed,She is low, her breath has passed, and she shall sleep,It has suffered me much.Here you lie, old crop, among dragons and clouds,Your carcass will blow you sky-high,I heard it of Mr. Nobody, of the Basilisk,Play the flute and feel the walky-walky ants,It ends in a fire of joy,Sleep, if you can… [End Page 609]
Ben Simons is Editor of Historic Nantucket and Robyn & John Davis Chief Curator of the Nantucket Historical Association in Massachusetts. His exhibitions and collections publications include The Nantucket Actors Colony, Greater Light: A House History, and The Nantucket Art Colony. His other publications are Maritime Maverick: The Maritime Collection of William I. Koch, A Yachtsman's Eye: The Glen S. Foster Collection of Marine Paintings, and articles in Renaissance Magazine, Nantucket Guide, Nantucket Today, Antiques and Fine Art, and other periodicals.
