The Girl Who Slept for Scotland

I tried to sleep upon my back so I could hold her all night long
As in my arms she slept, alas but no I couldn’t
And when daybreak came and found her at the far side of the bed
I tried to wake her, tried to stir her but she wouldn’t
In her fug she lay like someone dead, and even when I’d tug her head
And press and kiss and agitate and shake her
Or call her name or whisper it against her ear my breath warm
There were no words in this universe would wake her.
The girl who slept for Scotland
The girl who slept for Scotland
The girl who slept for Scotland
It took me time to comprehend this state of play
Extended to all her working waking shaking hours
And when she finally woke deep in the day
Still she did sleepwalk like a hollow ghost afloat in haunted towers
And though she heard she didn’t see, and though she saw she didn’t hear,
Attending only to what seemed precise and kind
Well she was settled in her dream, a shopping list of small illusions,
Pretty stories that she told her drowsy mind.
The girl who slept for Scotland
The girl who slept for Scotland
The girl who slept for Scotland
Yet I remember a day by a river wild
When she clung to me hard like a darling child
And at night in the sheets of a Dublin bed
When she moaned like a woman and gave sweet head
When we sang in songs together and our synchronised guitars
Played music to the rafters and made love among the stars
And our bodies beat like light in the beautiful embrace
And her tiny kisses burst like popping suns around my face.
But then trip decline collapse the lights went out she fell asleep again
Before my kiss-wet face was even dry
I really love your haircut she said talking in her sleep
The sleep-motes gathered in the dustbowls of her eyes
She teetered down the road apiece she and her man from dozy bedsit land
To the junkshop with her sleeping clothes in sacks
And when I’d gone she teetered down the road again, yawning as she went,
And went and brought the bloody damn things back.
The girl who slept for Scotland
The girl who slept for Scotland
The girl who slept for Scotland