Why aren’t we more terrified by sleep, of consciousness extinguished and no guarantee of return? Because of consciousness extinguished and no guarantee of return? Sometimes I feel my days are divided between not being able to wake up and not being able to sleep. Sleeping with, put to sleep—such infectious mystery in the sprawl of its name it unnames us. We fall asleep and fall in love to forget who we are. Everyone admired my friend’s being married to a good sleeper as we carried on late in their house. Sound sleeper meaning full fathom five deep. I love to watch people in public trying not to, then giving in, deflating, schlumping, the head bobs, mouth gapes, an untying sigh, something absolving them from the discomfort and boredom of the flight. The fever breaks. And of course the beloved’s greedy breathing, brow a little furrowed with the fickle task, a youthful flush in the cheeks. Maybe even death will be a replenishment. The Surrealists thought that sleeping was the only way to wake up, that most of us lumber about in an exhausted half-state (see above), inchlings of the scream, and sleep is the antechamber trance of dreams which are imagination’s life-affirming critique of reality. But to sleep, perchance to dream…there’s the rub for poor Hamlet, damned not with too little but too much consciousness so even the prospect of death provides no rest from the torments of being. Yipes! It’s enough to keep you up all night but sleep has seldom disappointed me except in being unattainable, over-excited night before, in hotel rooms, dread, the hamster running on the wheel in my head and then sometimes I resort to a pill of questionable worth. But to stretch out, lay the book of tortures aside, turn out the light, maybe a cat as guide, it’s all right, it can wait, there’s nothing more to do…maybe sleep is heaven such as ever I will find.
Dean Young divides his year between Berkeley and Iowa City, where he is on the faculty of the Iowa Writers Workshop. His new book of poems is called embryoyo.
