WeRead Powered by ReaderPub
Poems cover

Poems

Chapter 13: SLEEPING TOGETHER
Open in WeRead

Explore more books like this:

About This Book

A lyrical collection of short poems grouped by creative periods, ranging from intimate sketches of domestic and childhood moments to meditations on nature, the sea, love, loss, and memory. Many pieces blend concise, imagistic language with prose-like rhythms, alternating playful child verses and delicate elegies, and often evoke sensory detail—light, wind, flowers, and seaside landscapes—to explore fleeting moods and inward reflection. Several poems record quiet domestic scenes and grieving recollections, while others experiment with voice and form, producing both whimsical and mournful tones. The result is an intimate, varied sequence that emphasizes emotion, perception, and the small gestures that shape inner life.

SLEEPING TOGETHER

Sleeping together ... how tired you were ...
How warm our room ... how the firelight spread
On walls and ceiling and great white bed!
We spoke in whispers as children do,
And now it was I—and then it was you
Slept a moment, to wake—“My dear,
I’m not at all sleepy,” one of us said...
Was it a thousand years ago?
I woke in your arms—you were sound asleep—
And heard the pattering sound of sheep.
Softly I slipped to the floor and crept
To the curtained window, then, while you slept,
I watched the sheep pass by in the snow.
O flock of thoughts with their shepherd Fear
Shivering, desolate, out in the cold,
That entered into my heart to fold!
A thousand years ... was it yesterday
When we, two children of far away,
Clinging close in the darkness, lay
Sleeping together?... How tired you were...