In any case this poem is about how a dream once realised, can be an inspired piece of work. It is about how the creative force can take you over. Who ever said that the Gothic genre was dull?
She said she woke up with
Him in her head, in her bed.
Her mother-tongue clung to her
Mouth’s roof in terror, dumbing her,
And he came with a name that was none of her making.
No maidservant ever in her narrow attic,
Combing out her hair in the midnight mirror on Hallowe’en
(having eaten that egg with its yolk hollowed out then filled with salt)
- oh never one had such success as this she had not courted.
The amazed flesh of her neck and shoulders nettled at his apparition.
Later, stark staring awake to everything
(the room, the dark parquet, the white high Alps beyond)
All normal in the moonlight and him gone, save a ton-weight sensation,
The marks fading visibly where his buttons had bit into her
And the rough serge of his suiting had chafed her sex,
She knew – oh that was not how – but he’d entered her utterly.
This was the penetration
Of seven swallowed apple pips.
Or else he’d slipped like a silver dagger between her
Ribs and healed her up secretly again.
Anyway he was inside her and getting him out
Again would be agony fit to quarter her, unstitching everything.
Eyes on those high peaks in the reasonable sun of the morning,
She dressed in damped muslin and
Sat down to quill and ink and icy paper.
Him in her head, in her bed.
Her mother-tongue clung to her
Mouth’s roof in terror, dumbing her,
And he came with a name that was none of her making.
No maidservant ever in her narrow attic,
Combing out her hair in the midnight mirror on Hallowe’en
(having eaten that egg with its yolk hollowed out then filled with salt)
- oh never one had such success as this she had not courted.
The amazed flesh of her neck and shoulders nettled at his apparition.
Later, stark staring awake to everything
(the room, the dark parquet, the white high Alps beyond)
All normal in the moonlight and him gone, save a ton-weight sensation,
The marks fading visibly where his buttons had bit into her
And the rough serge of his suiting had chafed her sex,
She knew – oh that was not how – but he’d entered her utterly.
This was the penetration
Of seven swallowed apple pips.
Or else he’d slipped like a silver dagger between her
Ribs and healed her up secretly again.
Anyway he was inside her and getting him out
Again would be agony fit to quarter her, unstitching everything.
Eyes on those high peaks in the reasonable sun of the morning,
She dressed in damped muslin and
Sat down to quill and ink and icy paper.
