Hide me from the dawn.

I wanted to share this beautiful and moving poem which one of my tutors read to us in class. It is quite dark, morbid and shocking but I just love it- it is a nice break from all unrealistic, romantic bullshit.


the darkness of death: a love poem


I want to sleep the way apples dream
not in some rowdy cemetery
I want to sleep the way that dreaming boy
tried to open his heart to the fathomless sea

I don't want to hear how the dead die bloodless
how the mouth in its wasting calls out for water
I don't want to hear about death in the undergrowth
or the poison teeth of the moon before dawn

I want to sleep, for a moment,
a moment, a minute, a millennium
but I want them to know that I have not died
that in my mouth there are golden horses
that I am the youth lover of the West Wind
that I am the over-arching shadow of my tears

hide me from the dawn
I don't want to wake with ants in my mouth
pour on my shoes the weight of water
so that I can evade the scorpion's claw

for I want to sleep the way apples dream
to learn the tears that will cleanse me of clay;
for I want to live with that dark youth
who tried to open his heart to the fathomless sea