Today's poem
- Night crept up on them - Sappho -
At night the calmness embraces readers with warmness in the poem. Although there have been thousands of poems written with a theme of sleep and the poem belongs to the category of Ages 14-16 in Poetry Archive, it brings fresh impressions to adult readers, too. Fine devices (variation in number of lines, enjambment, etc. & etc.) stay in details of the poem.
Please read it aloud, recite it before hearing footsteps of sleep, sitting at the gate of a dream, far-off world.
Sleep by Ella Duffy
(from Poetry Archive)
https://childrens.poetryarchive.org/poem/sleep/
is stillness paused in stone,
the bronze cast of a posed god,
Eros, whose face, limbs,
have softened to childhood.
It is the breath before prayer,
a window staining its church
with sacred light; or secular,
a cashpoint glowing
in a late night precinct.
Sleep is air, the secrecy
of a barn owl in flight;
her pale pulse. It is the last gasp
of smoke from a candle, blown
for a wish; a seed puffed
from its stem to stray beyond sight.
- Night crept up on them - Sappho -
At night the calmness embraces readers with warmness in the poem. Although there have been thousands of poems written with a theme of sleep and the poem belongs to the category of Ages 14-16 in Poetry Archive, it brings fresh impressions to adult readers, too. Fine devices (variation in number of lines, enjambment, etc. & etc.) stay in details of the poem.
Please read it aloud, recite it before hearing footsteps of sleep, sitting at the gate of a dream, far-off world.
Sleep by Ella Duffy
(from Poetry Archive)
https://childrens.poetryarchive.org/poem/sleep/
is stillness paused in stone,
the bronze cast of a posed god,
Eros, whose face, limbs,
have softened to childhood.
It is the breath before prayer,
a window staining its church
with sacred light; or secular,
a cashpoint glowing
in a late night precinct.
Sleep is air, the secrecy
of a barn owl in flight;
her pale pulse. It is the last gasp
of smoke from a candle, blown
for a wish; a seed puffed
from its stem to stray beyond sight.