Sleep On, Sleep On... Poem by Liberatore Suffoletta

Sleep on, Sleep on…
Though the moon is playing tag with the sun
And hides in it’s dark penumbra
Sleep on, sleep on…
Clutch the pillow ever tighter
Sleep on, nothing remains now
Dancing walls stir in the prairies
America drowns itself in machinery
Proudly lamenting the price of oil
I have never understood, never,
The perfume of your dark magnolia
Nor the parrot who flies out your teeth
From the martyred belly of your heart

A thousand Roman sentries fell asleep
in the moonlit plaza of your forehead
while four months I sought the knowledge
from your hands and waist, enemies of snow
between painted plaster of jasmine
your glance, mouth full of seeds
searched my breast to give me
the Latin prayer saying: Never!
Never! , never, my agony’s garden
feeds your elusive form of woman
the taste of your veins in my mouth
your mouth now lightless in the desert

Sleep on, sleep on, forget the moon!
Playing hide and seek with the sun
While hiding all of eternity’s sunsets
In it’s somnambulistic lover’s ballet
I choose to sleep and dream
Perhaps arise for the next one
I endured sunrise’s green poison
the struggles of wounded nights
but how to endure your nudeness
like a lotus open in the reeds
show me oceans finding channels
emptiness of shadowy planets
valleys knee deep in ice water
flowers of red for my heart
but do not let me see again
the coolness of your waist:
talk things over with friends
wearing wings of caterpillars
while blades of larks return
while I seek you in wine’s cave
sleeping the tacit sleep of grapes
far from the noise of cemeteries
I sleep often lost on the sea
With an ear full of tiny piers
My sliced tongue full of agony
And love; oh, lost on that sea
As I am lost in the heart
Of certain grown children

Sleep on, sleep on, forget the moon!
There is no one I can kiss
Without feeling the smile
Of your many faces
There is no one I can touch
my hands have no more sense
than to seek for your roots
beneath all this virgin soil
Tho’ I am lost in the heart
of certain grown women
a branch broken by itself
neath an apple tree of sobs
while hummingbirds sigh
and feral cats drive them
off through the salt marsh
This branch is happy
It’s dropped off to sleep
As if it was a tree
neither, thinking of rain
nor awaiting the moon’s dance
nor awaiting steps of spring.
While I, I want nothing else,
Only a hand. I desire
a wounded hand, if possible.
Pale lily of a dove anchored
Hard in my sleeping heart
Being the guard blocking
Entrance forever to the moon
I want nothing else, only that hand
Everything else to someone else
All the leaves have fled whirling
The harbour is naked in its green
The salt marsh is flooded in tears
All the roses are awaiting dawn
Through sleep’s branches
I dream two dark doves
One is the sun
The other the moon
Little neighbors, I called
And reached for the earth
Then, I saw two naked doves
The one was the other
And both of them, neither
As two snowy eagles
And a naked woman
Flew away.

Sleep on, sleep on…