Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Stolen words

X
I dreamt we slept in a moss in Donegal
On turf banks under blankets, with our faces
Exposed all night in a wetting drizzle,
Pallid as the dripping sapling birches.
Lorenzo and Jessica in a cold climate.
Diarmuid and Grainne waiting to be found.
Darkly asperged and censed, we were laid out
Like breathing effigies on a raised ground.
And in that dream I dreamt—how like you this?—
Our first night years ago in that hotel
When you came with your deliberate kiss
To raise us towards the lovely and painful
Covenants of flesh; our separateness;
The respite in our dewy dreaming faces.

Seamus Heaney

I used the phrase covenants of flesh in one of my essays and I couldn't remember where I had heard them, for I knew they were not mine. They come from this lovely poem by Seamus Heaney.

I sleep more now. My mom puts in my tape of True Blood when I settle in bed and I watch it from the beginning til I fall alseep. I sleep all day and most of the night, most of it. Then I wake and I admit, I pray sometimes for the profound peace of the grave (my words this time). Ten more pounds I have lost and the fevers and weakness are worse. How nice it would be to have some cool skinned thing, some dark angel to take me in his arms and gasp at my heat, but embrace me anyway and give me relief. My hair is thinning. I cried a little over that.

No comments: