Friday, March 29, 2019

March 29: Restless Sleep, Tired, "Monk Hasn't Slept A Wink in 86 Years: A Sestina"

I'm tired.  It feels like I have't slept in about four or five days, even though I've been going to bed at 7:30 or 8:00 almost every night.

Last night, I laid down at 9:30, got up to brush my teeth, and then went right back to bed again.  I need to get real sleep, I guess, that isn't disturbed or restless.

Saint Marty doesn't remember what that kind of sleep feels like.


Monk Hasn’t Slept A Wink in 86 Years:  A Sestina *

by:  Martin Achatz

His eyelids as transparent as Superior water,
The monk breathes prayer in his dark
Cell, prayer for the mosquitoes on his arms,
The starling outside his window, broken
By a hawk’s claws, the father he met who weeps
For a daughter, hungry ulcers

On her hands and legs.  The monk blooms ulcers
On his tongue and lips, drinks pain like water
From the injured air until his body weeps
Blood, until his skin crawls with rose-dark
Bruises, his vigil thick with days of broken
Stigmata, with sleepless nights in the arms

Of green anguish, incandescent arms
Laced with groans and pleading, with bright ulcers
Of hope.  Good Friday, he kneels beside a broken
Pilgrim, washes her twisted limbs with Lake water,
Chrism, and salt.  Her dark
Scars split open under his hands.  He weeps

For her, for her wounds that won’t heal, weeps
For Christ, His raw and flowing stripes, His arms
And legs, crushed by the dark
Weight of love.  The monk knows this love, ulcers
Fresh as summer blueberries on his heart.  Water
Striders stipple the midnight Lake.  A broken

Moon rises in a starless sky and broken
Light touches the shore where a girl weeps
Over him, his young body, her water
Touch on his thighs and chest and boy arms.
After ninety years, he still tastes the ulcers
Of her tears, carries the dark

Burden of her love this vesper night, a dark
Gethsemane that rains fat olives, broken
And black and bitter, in his heart.  New ulcers
Unfurl and breathe.  Their perfume weeps
From his old and tired pores, from his arms
Stretched and nailed to the moon, the shore, the water,

Superior.  The dark tomb of his heart unseals, weeps
For rest, for unbroken sleep in love’s arms.
Her kisses, sweet ulcers, fall on him like rainwater.

*Title taken from headline in Weekly World News



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