The Sleeping Beauty: Variation of the Prince

After the thorns I came to the first page.

He lay there grey in his fur of dust:

As I bent to open an eye, I sneezed.

But the ball looked by me, blue

As the sky it stared into...

And the sentry's cuirass is red with rust.

Children play inside: the dirty hand

Of the little mother, an inch from the child

That has worn out, burst, and blown away,

Uncurling to it-does not uncurl .. .

The bloom on the nap of their world

Is set with thousands of dawns of dew.

But at last, at the center of all the webs

Of the realm established in your blood,

I find you; and- look!- the drop of blood

Is there still, under the dust of your finger:

I force it, slowly, down from your finger-

And it falls and rolls away, as it should.

And I bend to touch- just under the dust

That was roses once-the steady lips

Parted between a breath and a breath

In love, for the kiss of the hunter, Death. ...

Then I stretch myself beside you, lay

Between us, there in the dust, His sword.

When the world ends- it will never end-

The dust at last will fall from your eyes

In judgment, and I shall whisper:

"For hundreds of thousands of years I have slept

Beside you, here in the last long world

That you had found- that I have kept."

When they come for us- no one will ever come-

I shall stir from my long light sleep,

I shall whisper, "Wait, wait! . . . She is asleep."

I shall whisper, gazing, up to the gaze of the hunter,

Death, and close with the tips of the dust of my hand

The lids of the steady-

Look, He is fast asleep!

Structure

37 lines · 6 stanzas