prose poem
Falling Asleep: The Human Voice is a River
On Friday after work I went to the Oswald reading. I had run at lunch, was feeling tired, and outside the college I folded my bike, the porter stood it into a cupboard for me, I walked into the quad and found the room, felt sure I had been here before, perhaps years ago. It was nicely heated, even though I was early there were already several people sitting. I recognised some of my students, or former students, and sat next to K, with my Brompton bag and fluorescent jacket, at the end of the row, we chatted for a little while, and I took out my phone and texted Z and felt cosy and expectant. I recognised A in the row behind me, but I did not want to talk to anyone, really, I felt at this end of the week as if I just wanted to cruise downwards until she was there at the front, looking younger than I had thought she would (we’d last met a decade ago) but with one arm in a cast. Right from the start of the first poem I knew I would sleep, I in fact intended to sleep, her voice lulls and is soft enough to sink into, she slowly becomes inaudible to me, I can float at a level somewhere between consciousness and sleep, deep sleep is below me like the bed of a still deep pool I can submerge into carefully, because after a certain point there is no rushing back, no climbing out until I am fully immersed, not needing to breathe. I am fully aquatic now, the words are perceived as shoals of small trout, darting, loving the shadows under the trees. I feel my body starting away, awake, she is reading something different, I listen a little, straighten my body, but then I feel I am slumped again and her voice is a river tinkling past me, some dim music I can half remember, all this time she is reading without script, from memory, the room is full of rapt attentive people, it is as if my sleeping is a mild protest, even though I love her poetry I also resent her self-assuredness, her voice seems very definite, something of Sitwell, not that I dislike Sitwell, as I dream I see a dark pool again, on which there are insects moving, squat, penny-like shapes, perhaps musical notes, sounds, or they may be bedbugs, but seeing them spin crazily on the surface of the water, they are whirligig beetles, I explain this to the children, who are younger, and interested in her speaking from memory, as if that is the thing she can add to what poetry has been before, at length hearing an obscure noise underground, an unclosed ghost, I feel myself emerging, a slight alteration in her voice suggests that she is reaching a conclusion, but this is a great sleep, more than a little dip, a paddle in a dark stretch of water, I have crossed some small stream that was unexpectedly deep and find I am in a wide lake fringed by forest, here I begin giddily to come out of the water and shake myself like a dog, and soon I am more vibrantly aware than if I had not slept, yes she is still reading about Tithonus, the man who grew older and never died, it is all interesting, I like her syntax, her delivery, it is so comfortable I would always want her to read to me in this voice so I can sleep again and again, adjusting my breathing and level of attention as I please, my level in the water. I feel refreshed as if I have really swum along with it, as she on the stage instructed me, I followed, a porpoise following a boat and when she reached the shore, or came near, I turned away. I woke into my side-fellows, K on the one side and a short-haired female student on the other, who looked at me waggishly. They thought they had heard the reading, but I had followed it more deeply, and had nothing more to say to those around me. It occurred to me to go up to shake her hand but I decided not to, she was already surrounded by students, the train beckoning, the weekend breaking around me.
Giles Goodland lives and works in London. His next book will be Civil Twilight (Free Verse Editions, late 2021). Back in 1994 he met Alice Oswald at an Eric Gregory awards ceremony, where they shared a stage. He would like to stress that he does not find her readings soporific. He was just really tired.