'Sleeping Beauty in the Last Long World', by Paul Illidge
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 eye looked by me, blue
As the sky it stared into . . .
And the sentry’s cuirass red with dust.
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—but 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 where
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 judgement, and I shall whisper:
“For hundreds of thousands of years I have slept
Beside you, here in the last long world
That you have found, and 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 tops of the dust of my hand
The lids of the steady stare—
Look, she is fast asleep!
Paul ILLIDGE has an M.A. in English Language & Literature from the University of Toronto.
He has been a novelist, short story writer, memoirist, screenwrter, ghostwriter and professional nonfiction writer since 2001, publishing books for clients, some for trade, on theatre (THE GLASS CAGE), architecture (BEYOND THE FOUNTAINHEAD), law (THE LUNATIC AND THE LORDS), the pharmaceutical industry (CAN YOU GIVE ME SOMETHING FOR THAT?) and the 21ST century Internet (THE PAGE, THE STAGE, THE DIGITAL AGE).