Brian Walter
I’ve read all the night – now dawn
has lit the east – with little sound
through the dark to disquieten me,
only the last whispers of the rains
or an artless eavesdropping of thought:
I renounced all hope of sleep.
She’s a strange escort, insomnia.
It is now twilit quiet, and I’m lost
in her arms, reading this restless time
away, back to the old Egyptians,
remembering their old creation mound
of the earliest light. I am so far back
that I almost miss the pointlessness
of our immediate rhythms, stirring –
hoots, and the hiss and clack of shunting trains,
the mind-made world of profit and loss
and the timetables they will sweat to keep.
Featured at The Red Wheelbarrow on 13 October 2022