Rest!
How hard we work at it / in rooms of assured silence.
Here’s a new poem about rest-in-a-time-of-late-capitalism. There may be a sequel poem for you soon, one that considers the phenomenon of ‘resting bitch face’. But for now, ‘Rest!’.
Rest!
How hard we work at it
in rooms of assured silence,
sofas too taupe to be comforting.
We have completed centuries
of weight-bearing exercise
and now we must sleep
when the baby sleeps,
sink into age-defying dreams
known only by the dead.
A breeze bothers the sash frames.
Next door’s dachshund
whines like a firework
coming back to earth
and we want to draw a great sheet
over us, silken against the chill
but perhaps we have husbands.
With our eyes shut we are busy
helping fathers who can’t help
themselves, or tending dawn
with secretarial efficiency.
Miles away, even our lovers lie
beneath exquisite coving,
high ceilings complacent
with light. We should imagine
our own lives - cool whitewashed
corridors full of closed doors,
how we might test them
one by one and firmly,
leaning our good weight
as a woman might
lean from a fifth-floor window
cursive, intending at first
only to take the air.
Helen Mort