Joan Murray: Lullaby (poem)

Lullaby

Sleep, little architect. It is your mother’s wish
That you should lave your eyes and hang them up in dreams.
Into the lowest sea swims the great sperm fish.
If I should rock you, the whole world would rock within my arms.

Your father is a greater architect than even you.
His structure falls between high Venus and far Mars.
He rubs the magic of the old and then peers through
The blueprint where lies the night, the plan the stars.

You will place mountains too, when you are grown.
The grass will not be so insignificant, the stone so dead.
You will spiral up the mansions we have sown.
Drop your lids, little architect. Admit the bats of wisdom into your head.

Joan Murray
(1917-1942)
Lullaby
Poems 1917-1942
New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975

• fleursdumal.nl magazine

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