Lady Macbeth on Sleep

Each shudder takes the mattress by surprise,

though guilt’s hard pillow stares you in the face;

the curtains whisper their beguiling lies,

but sleep the soft eraser can’t erase.

The night pretends it has no word for me,

I who have walked the corridors in fear

of each new-murdered ghost’s philosophy,

of acts whose rumor echoes in my ear.

Who when he sleeps is threatened by the real?

The falling ladders seem to comprehend

the fall of states; the nightmare robbers steal

the dagger clenched within the sleeper’s hand.

Last night I watched three sisters disagree

on a dead island in the green lagoon;

like Daphne each became a laurel tree

and walked across the black waves streaked with moon.

*

From “Macbeth in Venice” by William Logan (Penguin: 76 pp., $17 paper)