Sleeping Beauty Poem by Galina Italyanskaya
Sleeping Beauty
When hope is gone,
No stars, no sun,
Despair is deep.
Your nights pass by,
You can't survive,
Nor fall asleep.
The clock is striking half past one,
Your heart is sore
For all the dreams you can't enliven
Anymore.
Afraid of time, you feel its hands
Around your throat:
The lack of air, the lack of sense,
The lack of thought.
Tormenting nights remind you of a fairy tale
About the girl who spent in sleep her every day
Until her promised Mr. Right scraped through the shrub
To kiss her lips, as meant to be, and wake her up.
You'd like to sleep enough at last
Not being dead.
You envy her the youth and life
She has ahead.
And you believe that dreams are easier than life:
Just lie in bed and watch a film - no deeds, no strife.
I know so much about that,
You'll be surprized,
So I could tell you what I felt
And memorized.
Her soul is wandering above her feeble flesh
The world so weird that she often feels abashed.
It throws her up, it brings her down, it seems insane.
She doesn't guess, it's all illusive: joy and pain.
And when she meets someone, she hopes, he is a friend.
And when the skies start falling down, she meets the end.
As many times as many dreams before her eyes
She lives her life like it is real,
And so she dies.
She flies up freely to avoid
The fire of guns,
She drives her spaceship through the void
To other suns.
An infidel, she talks to god
While playing chess,
And if she wins, he'll give a nod
And even bless.
God never tries to put on airs
As one could think:
No time for pride when you must care for everything.
Another dream
She was a child before the king
Reproaching him:
It's silly that he wants to kill.
But now she's staring at the dread atomic cloud
And feeling mute, unable to draw a breath to shout.
Tsunami waves
Like crashing walls
Against the coast
Have swept and swallowed it at once, forever lost…
While she could simply fly away from certain death,
She's watching it, as if her feet froze to the earth.
And let her reach the hearts and minds of young and old,
Who said that beauty really can defend the world?
A happy, lucky, pretty girl
From le beau monde…
Who will descry a silver curl
If she's a blonde?
And who could fancy
Her serenity is fake?
A hundred years
She sees nightmares
And can't awake.
________________________
(Ukhta, January 05 2016)
Thank you very much, Kim! I'm very glad that it doesn't seem boring!
It's been half a year since your last poem but the time gestated a magnificent poem. It deserves its lenght because it embraces so much of life/sleep - reality/fantasy - hope/despair. But in the long run of the poem these pairs begin to blend rather than cancel each other. For example, there's no denying hopes are betrayed, but other hopes replace and the speaker always follows the newest hope.The fairy tale of Sleeping Beauty is especially provocative: her awakening is a second birth to mature love and responsibility, it's a happy ending but the logic of the story means their lives together are beginning fresh on a solid foundation rather than the illusions of yesterday. There is no closure for your poem. But the energy of the speaker will NOT be defeated by setbacks however vexed. She is simply too strong, too resilient, too imaginative to be defeated. Guaranteed!
Thank you, Daniel! You're right, the fairy tale is really provocative. Well, in the most of cases we don't know how loving couples spend their life after their wedding. But in this case it's not only her future.100 years of her present life are mystery too. It's nothing - she spent so much time sleeping, motionless, in the castle, but noone can know for sure, what she was dreaming about. And the poem was provoked by my friend who once noticed that dreaming is easy. People are different, and maybe they see different dreams. But for me dreaming is not easier than real life. In reality you can solve your problems and do something with other people's help. In your dreams you're maybe mighty, but at the same time helpless and defenceless. And in dreams the world is much bigger than in your real life. No, it's not easy to dream and stay sane. The world is a mess, it can be nice, it can be cruel and crazy, and as a consequence it's all in our dreams. We can not dream about rosy butterflies only. But, well, usually when everything is getting worse, we can wake up. But poor 16-years-old girl who can not wake from her dreaming! Really nothing to envy!
This is such an intriguing poem, expressed with beautiful words, yet it speaks with a lot of pain and sadness. I wish this is one poem I can fully comprehend, but for now only in parts. The writer seems to have a mix of a very complex mind and a very sensitive heart.
Well conceived and nicely brought forth in persuasive expression with conviction. A work of an intricate mind. Thanks for sharing Galina and do remain enriched.
Your imaginations bring life's adventure seem real... many can relate to it somehow! Liked it!
I can't explain the beauty of this beautiful poem which leads to the eternity of life. Very soft, mild and soothing write. Thanks for sharing. Keep writing. +10.
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem
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4/27/2024 6:25:19 AM # 1.0.0.1119
Wow! This is a fascinating poem and one that demands plenty of attention from the readers. You took the fairy tale of the Sleeping Beauty and placed it in a complex narrative, if I say so, that unravels many different states of CONSCIOUSNESS. I assume this poem is mostly about human consciousness, dreams, fantasies, and psychological phenomenas. It is really worthy question - maybe she was sleeping, but does it mean that her consciousness too was sleeping? ? What if she was in a state of physical limbo, but her mind wandered off in dreams and fantasies, maybe even connected to a higher level of consciousness? ? What we primarily assume to be a kind of fairy tale, might be more of a horror story! ! A brilliant one Galina, one that we can call, to take W. B. Yeats' words, a 'terrible beauty'.. BRAVO! !