
René Magritte
The Menaced Assassin, 1926
Oil on canvas
"I want to sleep the sleep of the apples,
I want to get far away from the busyness of the cemeteries.
I want to sleep the sleep of that child
who longed to cut his heart open far out at sea.
I don't want them to tell me again how the corpse keeps all its blood,
how the decaying mouth goes on begging for water.
I'd rather not hear about the torture sessions the grass arranges for
nor about how the moon does all its work before dawn
with its snakelike nose.
I want to sleep for half a second,
a second, a minute, a century,
but I want everyone to know that I am still alive,
that I have a golden manger inside my lips,
that I am the little friend of the west wind,
that I am the elephantine shadow of my own tears.
When it's dawn just throw some sort of cloth over me
because I know dawn will toss fistfuls of ants at me,
and pour a little hard water over my shoes
so that the scorpion claws of the dawn will slip off.
Because I want to sleep the sleep of the apples,
and learn a mournful song that will clean all earth away from me,
because I want to live with that shadowy child
who longed to cut his heart open far out at sea."
Federico García Lorca
Gacela of the Dark Death
Ah well back in the land of the Gray. The gray of Confederate ghosts in a parking lot garage. The gray of three cube walls that I sit in like a mouse sits in a cats mouth. The gray of the sunless sky that backdrops the bare branch mosaic outside a window I want to leap from. The gray of the slacks of a business suit that matches a tie I want to strangle someone with. The gray of the mood of a man who slit his wrists with a papercut off his paycheck.
Well at least I dream in color.
Gray Matters
on 2005-01-06 05:42 pm (UTC)Meanwhile, I can never get my apples to sleep, no matter how many stories I read aloud or how often I sing Welsh lullabys to them.
Re: Gray Matters
on 2005-01-06 06:00 pm (UTC)Oh and I now SO wish I used "Gray Matters" as the title of this piece. *slaps self in head*
Thanks for playing.
no subject
on 2005-01-07 03:25 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2005-01-07 04:31 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2005-01-07 06:25 pm (UTC)guess which one set me off this time? ;-)