Insomnia

Ionarts is happy to continue bringing more original poetry, kindly contributed by Frederick Pollack, author of The Adventure and Happiness, both book-length narrative poems, and whose shorter works have appeared in literary magazines such as The Hudson Review, The Southern Review, Salmagundi, Poetry Salzburg Review, Orbis UK, and the Munich-based Die Gazette. This is his third poem on Ionarts, following Parents of the Just Man, published in March, and Doodling, from May.

Insomnia When you haven’t slept for two nights (or for some people, one), you go through the following day doing everything you must, and even feeling everything you should, but with a time-lag. Impotently you struggle against it, turn at this corner, avoid that bore at the office; regard the child, the hydrangeas and think (and as required say) Yes, they’re beautiful, the day is gorgeous, but slowly. A kind of film plays, and you’re in it; another kind of film forms on your face, and it’s your face. And you don’t think of sleep but of another day without it, and fear the delay will increase; for with you locked away within it, what might the body do or say? It’s rather like poetry, where both the talented and untalented lie, but the talented (and this is the great secret) lie more. by Frederick Pollack