Variations on the Word "Sleep"
I would like to watch you sleeping,
which may not happen.
I would like to watch you,
sleeping. I would like to sleep
with you, to enter
your sleep as its smooth dark wave
slides over my head
and walk with you through that lucent
wavering forest of bluegreen leaves
with its watery sun & three moons
towards the cave where you must descend,
towards your worst fear
I would like to give you the silver
branch, the small white flower, the one
word that will protect you
from the grief at the center
of your dream, from the grief
at the center. I would like to follow
you up the long stairway
again & become
the boat that would row you back
carefully, a flame
in two cupped hands
to where your body lies
beside me, and you enter
it as easily as breathing in
I would like to be the air
that inhabits you for a moment
only. I would like to be that unnoticed
& that necessary.
Commentary
I loved today’s poem for the way it drew me in, for the almost palpable sense that I was accompanying the narrator on her journey into the still centre of her lover’s subconscious. I was strongly reminded of Orpheus, and his descent into hell to rescue Eurydice (very likely a deliberate resonance, with the poem’s underworld imagery of staircases and boats), and somewhat, too, of C. L. Moore’s “Jirel of Joiry” (nice ’30s fantasy novel).
As always, Atwood’s imagery is vivid and immersive - astonishingly immersive, when you consider how nondescriptive it is. The way the little images - the wavering, lucent forest, the flame in two cupped hands, the watery sun - weave together into a delicate, fantastic whole is nothing short of magical.
And then, having drawn us down into the depths and back again, Atwood leaves with the unexpected and beautiful image in the last verse. It is worth noting how well the verse works both as a conclusion to the longer poem and as an almost self-contained poem in its own right. Structurewise, too it balances the first two lines, providing the ‘reality’ from which the poem descends into a dreamscape, and to which it returns, enriched. Note the change from the semidetached “I would like to watch you sleeping” to the wholly involved “I would like to be the air that inhabits you”.
On a deeper level, the poem is not so much about journey as about rhythm - the visceral troughs and crests of breathing and sex and dreaming and sleep cycles, the longer rhythms of relationships and life, and through it all, the simultaneous suggestion of constancy, the calm still point through which cycles pass, departing but always returning, unnoticed and necessary.
— Martin
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From the Wondering Minstrels mailing list, 1999–2008.
Connie Rockman · 23 September 2002
Martin,
I think there is another resonance in this poem. The images - the water, the boat, the silver branch, the long stairway - also come from the folktale of “The Twelve Dancing Princesses.” Do you know it? The princesses are locked in their room every night, but in the morning their shoes are worn out. Many men try to find out where they go, but only when a young man has some magical help with a cloak of invisibility, is he able to follow them down a long stairway to an underground forest and lake, where they are rowed across to dance all night in a castle. The young man breaks off three branches from the enchanted forest before he follows them up the stairway to their bedroom again. It’s a wonderful metaphor for sleep and dream, filled with all those images of folklore.
Connie Rockman
Vivian Eden · 24 September 2002
Lovely. Good to have you back.
E. Bruce Johnson · 1 October 2002
There is a peacefulness and serenity in this poem that pervades it throughout. All of us have been there and have experienced sleep so it is not a far leap to ‘feel’ this poem. It expresses well the longing to experience this serenity with a lover and travel with her to that secret and at times scary place but to do so and fear nothing because we are not alone. The metaphors are perfect. Although I’m not Atwood’s number one fan, she touched me with these romantic musings.
Norman Becca · 19 April 2004
Variations on the Word “Sleep” -
This is an excellent poetic expression of the Hero’s Journey, complete with mythic images, and complete with the layering of the Heroine’s Journey. Those interested in Atwood’s expressions here should also check out her poems in You are Happy which include ones from the viewpoint of Circe herself, for instance.
I have long valued this poem both for its literary allusions and for its sweetly murmuring language. My fiance and I have just selected it as our marriage reading since it shows an awareness of trials to come and our roles in nurturing each other through those trials, subconscious or conscious, along with a marvelous personal involvement and depth (no pun intended) of care not expressed in so many poems that give advice from a distance about love and marriage.
-Becca