Lights Out

Helene Schjerfbeck

Lights Out

I have come to the borders of sleep,

The unfathomable deep

Forest where all must lose

Their way, however straight,

Or winding, soon or late;

They cannot choose.

 

Many a road and track

That, since the dawn’s first crack,

Up to the forest brink,

Deceived the travellers,

Suddenly now blurs,

And in they sink.

 

Here love ends,

Despair, ambition ends;

All pleasure and all trouble,

Although most sweet or bitter,

Here ends in sleep that is sweeter

Than tasks most noble.

 

There is not any book

Or face of dearest look

That I would not turn from now

To go into the unknown

I must enter, and leave, alone,

I know not how.

 

The tall forest towers;

Its cloudy foliage lowers

Ahead, shelf above shelf;

Its silence I hear and obey

That I may lose my way

And myself.

Edward Thomas 

 

"There is not any book/Or face of dearest look/That I would not turn from now..." That line jumps out at me. It's true, there comes a point where we all do this, no matter how much we don't want to. How strange. How very strange sleep is, when you think about it. This poem reminds us of that. Every night we go on a journey and lose ourselves. I love how this poem with it's short lines and tight rhymes emphasizes the rhythmic inevitability of sleep. I read an African folk tale once, about a boy who goes hunting for sleep, and how his family warns him that sleep will creep up and catch him before he knows what is happening. Interesting, that idea of Sleep as a predator and we its prey.