Tag: Memories

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Shrines

Drowsiness. A travel book. Stone bastions.
Halfway I’ve leaved through the old chateaux
of Provence, envied asylums astraddle
rough mounts, wondered: if not wanderlust, o scions

of strife, then what itch lures us through eons
and wakes us to rout? Across the dry plateaux
of sheets wind legions amd litters which addle
the sleep, ring out camp minions’ shrill paeans.

Since when we sleep we dream, how easy doom
in battle seems a transport, quick admission
to Elysium, free of scheme and schism.

Pilgrims lurching to our own tombs,
in journey’s trance we hallow our submission
to boundary, custom and ism.

***

Another sonnet from the Berkeley period, this one dedicated to a friend in tirade and despair. Neil and I shared a fascination with how far human cruelty can go, and how blindly we remain attached to the narrow worlds into which we are born. Though there is but contingent connection, the first verse echoes a line from Osip Mandelshtam: Insomnia, Homer, taut sails.

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Succubus

Not sloth but thought of you keeps me abed.
I summon you up, nuzzling the sheets
as if mere want might lie in your stead,
my hands manage to rival our feats.
I no longer hold you in my sleep.
Even when you feature in a dream
I pinch myself awake. No slumber’s deep
enough to mask you’re not the mate you seem.
Why should I rise and dress if not in quest
of you, who’ve led me to this cul-de-sac?
More than absence leaves me this depressed.
Finding you would never bring you back.
If pain be proof of love, then love it must
have been. If not, what pain there is in lust.

***
Although the experience which inspired this poem dates from 1975, it did not reach anywhere near its present form until 1983, during the years I think of as my golden age of poetry. I was a simple wine merchant, working and living in Berkeley, far removed from my subsequent academic concerns. Once the day’s work was over, I had time and inspiration to experiment with forms like this sonnet, very different than writing about sonnets.

Succubi appear to be coming back strong in popular culture thanks to the contemporary fascination with vampires. I can’t help but observe that Latin roots of the words endorse a conventional, missionary perspective on sexual positions (from succub(āre) “to lie under” < sub- “under” +cubāre “to lie in bed”), as does the male counterpart, incubus (incubāre,  “to lie upon”).