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Poem Of The Week: Sleeping Through By Faith Lawrence

Sleeping Through

He wakes, reaches
for my hand and says
‘it’s very morning’,
which is true.
The sky is lanolin,
dressed for business
as he kisses me
and smiles with that
rough new
tenderness of his -
then it’s time to get up,
time for breakfast,
and this is why
I write no poems -
my boy singing
to his tiny trains,
a day with no interstices,
beautiful as usual.

Here’s a beautiful capturing of a moment, apprehended in foreshortened lines that seem to illuminate, rather than diminish, its heartfelt intensity. A celebration of beneficence, of grace even – her narrator is enveloped in the undirected ministration of love – Faith Lawrence’s poem elicits an intimation of something intangible, an intuition of shared warmth, a hallowed moment as resistant to description as that rendered opalescent, and prescient, by Derek Mahon in ‘Everything is Going to be Alright’.

Recollecting, and expanding upon, the emotion ‘in tranquility’, Lawrence embellishes the inviolate abstraction of the memory – ‘I write no poems’ – with her own ironic interstice, an act of creative homage.

‘Sleeping Through’ is taken from The Laureate’s Choice Anthology: Twenty poets chosen by Carol Ann Duffy, published by smith | doorstop (2019), and is reproduced with the kind permission of the publisher.

More information here.

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