Sleeping Dogs

A pastiche poem by Debbie Frampton and Charles Dickens
2000

You and me know what we know, don’t we.
We know our station. Ashes and dust.
It’s a mad world. Mad as bedlam!
Insanity or intoxication.

And I know what I am—a shapeless thought.
(I need be to get through this world at all.)
I wallow in words only meant to mystify.
My eyes, not being so much under control as my tongue,
send meditations to flight with an indescribably sensitive
pleasure, that very little would change to pain

Have you seen her?
She has spread a little pair of wings
and flown away before my eyes.
I ask pardon of that lady in my heart.

Why has she done nothing to set things right?

You know my motive--to bring forgiveness.
But it comes from my wicked hand,
thus the lessons of my life have been perverted.
I thought it possible that I could truly mourn for one
and not have some part in the grief of all.

Such is the first mistaken impulse of an undiscliplined heart.

But no matter. No matter!
When I say I’ll do a thing, I do it.
I do my duty. That’s what I do.
A weak-minded person may do what wonderful people may not.

Think of me at my best if circumstances should ever part us.

And tell me how you fare to feel upon your lone lorn journeys!
There’s time enough. Don’t hurry.
And don’t take refuge in a lie!

The time has past. I let it go by.
I had no conception of the wound I would droop beneath.
It died upon my lips
and there I leave it.
No one has ever raised the curtain since.

Ah, but let sleeping dogs lie----
Who wants to rouse ‘em?