Nightwatch, 1842

When night falls and all others

have resigned their trust, I walk

the galleries, the guardian,

the master of all that stalks

their fitful sleep. I inquire

into all compalints, gratify

all reasonable desires.

I compel those with angry

and turbulent passions

to follow healthier trains

of thought. I give due ballast

to the most frivolous claims –

become master of reason

when I’ve need to flatter

the restless and the noisy:

“What spikes your night are pictures,”

I tell them. One’s convinced

that shadows cut her like knives,

another dreams she’s beset

by gangs of wizards and thieves.

To those who sing or whistle

or laugh; or to one who struts

the long gallery and chants,

“Dirty slut, dirty slut, slut…”

I’ll bring the required balm.

The somnambulist I’ll lead

back to bed like a child;

while to her who cries for “Auld

Auntie Peggy”, my soft step

nears like a loved one,

giving fresh hope and healing

to her troubled mind. No sound

soils the night that can’t be traced

back to its primary source.

from their soliloquies, songs

and prayers, I chart the course

of that wayward black river

whose stream’s one moment chocked

by rock and, at the next, split

in shallows featureless as smoke.

In the solitude of midnight

I notate such fractured plots.

When day commands the gallery,

another will take my watch.

From Dear Alice – Narratives of Madness (Salt, 2008). We have also published two other poems by Tom Pow, The Great Asylums of Scotland and The Last Vision of Angus McKay. Reproduced with permission from Salt Publishing Limited. © Tom Pow.

Chosen by Femi Oyebode.