Poem
Mary O’Donoghue
DAUERNARKOSE
DAUERNARKOSE
DAUERNARKOSE
She has been asleep for three days,a liquid length of time
closed over her head like a sheet
of lake-water. They think they have
her dreams cached away
in their clutterbook of explanans,
and see no flicker hint from behind
eyelids fern-stitched with blue veins.
But she is navigating equations,
pointed fir jungles of isosceles
triangles, the screams of chalk
and nails like seagull voice, dust
of chalk a scurf on her cuffs.
She walks past the bossy sign-posts
of sine and tan, and her map begins
to make sense, when the two-legged
travel stool of pi is pulled from under
her and she is splashed awake. She leaves
infinity, her last mark, a slender eight
sleeping with its face to the wall.
© 2007, Mary O\'Donoghue
From: Among These Winters
Publisher: Dedalus Press, Dublin
From: Among These Winters
Publisher: Dedalus Press, Dublin
Dauernarkose: From the German. An experimental treatment for schizophrenics, it involved prolonged drugged sleep, and was also called “the continuous sleep cure”.
Poems
Poems of Mary O’Donoghue
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DAUERNARKOSE
She has been asleep for three days,a liquid length of time
closed over her head like a sheet
of lake-water. They think they have
her dreams cached away
in their clutterbook of explanans,
and see no flicker hint from behind
eyelids fern-stitched with blue veins.
But she is navigating equations,
pointed fir jungles of isosceles
triangles, the screams of chalk
and nails like seagull voice, dust
of chalk a scurf on her cuffs.
She walks past the bossy sign-posts
of sine and tan, and her map begins
to make sense, when the two-legged
travel stool of pi is pulled from under
her and she is splashed awake. She leaves
infinity, her last mark, a slender eight
sleeping with its face to the wall.
From: Among These Winters
Dauernarkose: From the German. An experimental treatment for schizophrenics, it involved prolonged drugged sleep, and was also called “the continuous sleep cure”.
DAUERNARKOSE
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