If I spoke your name out loud
it would take 20 sleepless years
to say it.

But I want to sleep.

And if I sleep…

And if you wake…

I woke early this morning, my German friend had to catch a bus,
something out of the Arabian Nights for you.
I remember it must have been spring at the time of recording
because it was warm enough to wheel an amplifier
through the streets of New York.

You know, and I wanted my life to begin again,
as if I was walking through the streets at 6 a.m.,
having just left my new lover.

I was smoking by an open doorway, I was blurred,
too much alcohol and not enough sleep,
I was listening to Loaded on the hi-fi,
something out of Hans Christian Andersen for you:
it was one of those days when two seasons meet,
summer and autumn, the air was subtle, teetering,
and there was something indefinably moving in the quality of the light
in which I felt I was and was not,
and then the music ended, but even though I was shot
from the long drinking and the smoking
I wanted to put on another track again
just to cling to the sound of those harsh and sweet guitars
for a few moments more before sleeping.

And if you sleep…

And if I wake…

And if I spoke your name out loud,
if I had that courage and that privilege,
if I had to walk right round your name
— at, say, 5 letters per second —
it would take 20 sleepless years.

And I don't want to sleep, I want to hear the music.
And I don't want to sleep, don't put me down.
But why did you have to change things so?

Do you know who I am anymore?

I was in Germany once in winter, it had been snowing,
and there was thick frost; but there in the frozen dazzling streets
of Hamburg, the white air was suddenly filled
by the odour of cinnamon being unloaded from the warehouses.

And when I was a kid there were these Charles Atlas ads
'Before and After', I was the seven-stone weakling,
but I remembered David, and Goliath,
and I thought of Shakespeare and eternity.

Shall I tell you what you were like before you were born?
A little again about the crushed starlight and the cinnamon,
the subzeros of the U-bahn,
five countries in a bag, your lips, bullish and butterflied,
that had never kissed sexually before,
and the first beat of your heart, like a stone in David's sling,
and the second beat of your heart, like Goliath,
and the last beat, like star-defying Romeo,
star-accepting Juliet, and like a star, its cool light
finally reaching us, one morning in summer,
just a moment after we looked away?

I'd tell you my story about the New York station,
and how my life was saved by rock and roll —
but there's a change in the air.

You were a promise made to the world,
and I tried to honour you.
You could attain your own eyes like an altitude,
but never keep it.
And your own heart threw you out in the streets,
and sometimes you had to lie to get back in,
and sometimes you had to tell such a truth that
even when you stepped back in
it was strange, and you remembered the quality of the starlight at dawn
when you were 15 years old
and how you looked up, and made
some kind of promise.

I have spent 20 sleepless years saying your name —
but it isn't the name you call yourself.
I spent 20 sleepless years, now you want me to sleep.
But I'm not tired. I'm still young —
but I hear you calling.

What have you done?

I looked up from my book, as all people must.
But I never once looked away from the word.

Oh, sweetheart, what have you done?

Does it matter anymore that you can still
hear me saying
I will always try to honour my promise?
But you — you have looked away from these words.

And now you'll never hear that fine, fine music,
you'll never turn on that New York station.
Your life won't be saved by rock and roll.

It was one of those evenings when two lives meet,
and you're proud of love,
something out of Atlantis for you.
The air in the streets was supercharged by the spring storm,
when the hail had popped and blipped against the cars
and a stillness seemed to enter me
like the stillness that forms before the word,
a stillness that is homage to the word
and which the word beats against
with every human thing there has ever been
both the torment and the peace,
both the bestial rage and the bestial tenderness,
but above all hope, both the realised and the futile:
and I was proud of being in love
because it humbled and defied me,
and she swept through my life like that spring storm
had swept its way through the city
drowning it in moments — but not like Atlantis.

But you — what of you?
What have you done?
What have you done with the storm?
What have you done with the spring?

If I spoke your name out loud
it would take 20 sleepless years,
20, 40 sleepless years
to say it.

And if I had to write your name,
to wall it round with letters,
I would spend 20 sleepless years
to encircle you with your own heart.

But you want me to sleep…

And if I sleep…

And if you wake…

We are out of the Sirens and the Lorelei for you,
like a wet nurse out of Chekhov,
like a slave who loves you —
although we are not slaves.

And we were between the apes and the angels,
something out of a Persian spell,
something out of a dream sequence for you,
a few words from an old song
which has no author, and is not written down.

And you left us so long ago,
you left us to ourselves,
to our raw violence and our magnanimity,
to our smooth violence,
to our disturbed sleep, our broken and restless sleep —
you left us
to our beauty and our sea
and to a spring morning — it must have been spring
because I remember, it was warm enough
to wheel an amplifier through the streets of New York —
you left us to rotting to ourselves,
garbage and light,
and perhaps we deserved this.

Now, do we haunt you with cunieform and kisses?
Do we swim in your dreams with the shapes of crustacea,
or with morbid, stickleback eyes?
Do you dream at all?

Are you serene like ice, like bodhisattvas, with eyelids of stone,
with minds in tranquillity, statuesque in unmemory?
Or do we still sometimes disturb your sleep
with those uncontained sounds,
those screams and those sobs
which have no home, and raise goosebumps, and chill, and beckon?

I will love again.
I will love with everything good in me —
yes, and with everything bad as well.
I will love till I'm broken, and if I'm not broken
I will love,
something out of Tasso for you, out of Dante,
the Greeks, the ocean, out of Auschwitz for you…

I will not give up my innocence,
my ragged fury, my fused and earthbound
struggle to give this world a home,
and I will never, never look away from the word,
because I know it is there for me,
charged with bliss and outrage, and with the tenderness
of a young girl whose friends have left her
crying, alone, on the steps of her house.

I put on the Afghan Whigs, 1965, man that was the coolest sound
I ever heard.
And I know, I am one of those charred and turbulent things
whiplashing and frightened, electrical, eel supple and writhing
with eyes that know pain and have given pain.
I am one of those dying and scintillating things,
burning and shocked and boring,
I have a head full of summer
and a city evening which glides and switches and glimmers,
sudden with ends and sparking touches,
something out of Gilgamesh for you.

And if you die, will you die like us,
haunted and stupefied,
in shit and silence, chafed and wracked,
will you be so puzzled, so stunned, so wry?

Perhaps you were right to leave us, I don't know.
Because we are dragons and mermaids for you.
Do you regret our passage and our flight?
Do you regret at all?

I'm trembling. Won't you hold me for a moment more?

Ah, I'm sleepy. But if I speak your name out loud,
if I had that honour and that discovery,
if I had to love your name — at, say, 5 letters per second —
it would take 20 sleepless years.

I know, I am one of those incrimminated and insolvent things,
and my purity is violent,
I belong among my kind,
and our rapture is haloed with the burnt light
of those we let fall, burning and without time,
without space to hold them.
I am a guilty but a rearing thing,
mule-headed, Miranda in the daylight, far from Milan.
I'm succulent, and I click my tongue,
sass and swagger and nightingales…
Sugar, I'm the one.

What have you done?
Oh, sweetheart, what have you done?

We were the music and the fire.
We were the drive-by slaying, gun to a temple,
priest aflame, doused in gasoline,
we were the moment and the opportunity,
we were Buddha's footsteps, the smile and the flower,
the fumbled division of everything,
we were the pornography and the sutra,
we were the chance taken and the chance missed,
we were signs of unknowing, guerillas, ambassadors,
we were dangerous and ludicrous pioneers,
a drunk, lost boy, puking up in an alley:
we were Prospero's goodbye.

I must look up from my book now.
I am one of those flawed and sleepy things.
But if I sleep… And if you should wake…

I'm tired. Won't you tell me a story,
something out of Galilee or France for you?

I loved you
for 20 sleepless years,
and more.
For 20 sleepless nights.
For 20 sleepless skies.
I loved you
beyond reason or rhyme,
20 sleepless reasons, 20 sleepless rhymes —
but you left us:
at 5 letters per second
you walked away from us,
and they were blows, those letters, each one
against the universe.

You walked away. But you can still,
after all this time,
lay your child in my arms,
and Iwill sing her a lullaby…

I will sing her a lullaby
the willow more lovely than the rose
and the storm a child too,
rocking in my baby's arms.
I will sing her a lullaby,
the wind that shakes the trees and blows
all night by the river and the willows
in the morning will be a memory:
I will sing her a lullaby
until the eyelids of the rain,
one by one, close.

Bring me your child,
I'll sing her a lullaby.

But will she hear it?

And if she doesn't hear the lullaby,
tell me, will I be singing at all?

The willow more lovely than the rose,
I will sing her a lullaby.

Rain, close your eyes.

Copyright © Michael Ayres, 2003.

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