Second entry for Rex Nemorensis:
Insomnia
Everywhere it’s raining except here
where the mosquitoes thrive
and the car alarms wail at each other
all through the dog-moaning night,
and just before dawn that smell
of onions frying brings the image
of a fat ghost chef whose insomnia
is dealt with like this, making me
rush to the kitchen to catch him
but he and the smell are always gone.
And sleep has no chance at all then,
so rather than ride the toss-&-turning
horse I go naked onto the balcony
to count the lights left on in the flats,
trying to imagine who is up early
and who is late to bed, and soon
the night train will arrive from the north
to rest and be fed, the woken crows
will start the feral cats, and I will add
my wolf howl, then wait for the shouts.
- Matthew Sweeney
Stumbled across Matthew Sweeney randomly on the internet and I like what little I have read of his stuff. I have a fondness for narrative poems, ‘Rime of the Ancient Mariner’, ‘Ulalume’, ‘The Love Song of Alfred J Prufrock’ , etc. Sad how I never read the Spoon River Anthology in its entirety. I should get to that soon if I can find it lying around here (my book collection is a mess. Someday I’ll put up a post about the concentration-camp treatment any new book I buy has to go through. With pictures.)
Back to the poem. There is a very filmi quality to the poem in how it starts with the sounds presumably around the bed of the narrator (mosquitoes, distant car alarms, etc. ) then follows him as he tries to trace the “ghost chef” and finally ends with N. in the balcony. Sweeney paces the poem well, never lingering too long on any image, always cutting ahead to the next shot at the right time. The poem is quite subdued till the very end where N. lets out with his wolf howl. His (I just assumed N. was male) aloneness is painted well in his idle musings about the lights in other houses, and the phantom smell of frying onions. Which reinforces the violence of his wolf howl at the end and his expecting shouts of protest in return.
This whole scene would make a kickass opener for a play.
For links and some more poems by Matthew Sweeney, click here.
For an interview of Matthew Sweeney where he discusses his personal theory of poetry and some of his poems, click here.
