Some nights it's bound to be your best way out, <br />When nightmare is the short end of the stick, <br />When sleep is a part of town where it's not safe <br />To walk at night, when waking is the only way <br />You have of distancing your wretched dead, <br />A growing crowd, and escaping out of their <br />Time into yours for another little while; <br /> <br />Then pass ghostly, a planet in the house <br />Never observed, among the sleeping rooms <br />Where children dream themselves, and thence go down <br />Into the empty domain where daylight reigned; <br />Reward yourself with drink and a book to read, <br />A mystery, for its elusive gift <br />Of reassurance against the hour of death. <br />Order your heart about: Stop doing that! <br />And get the world to be secular again. <br /> <br />Then, when you know who done it, turn out the light, <br />And quietly in darkness, in moonlight, or snowlight <br />Reflective, listen to the whistling earth <br />In its backspin trajectory around the sun <br />That makes the planets sometimes retrograde <br />And brings the cold forgiveness of the dawn <br />Whose light extinguishes all stars but one.<br /><br />Howard Nemerov<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/insomnia-i/
