To Sleep, Perchance to Dream

‘Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished.”   

If in death we’d have an eternity to dream,
We’d unravel our tangled webs of existence
To follow each strand of life, each minute action
And its ramifications to alternative lives.
Oh, to have an eternity to purge one’s regrets
And to wander down ‘what could have been’ lanes
That we’d peered down briefly, but moved on past.

 It’s a cruel jest of the Gods to let us just sip

From the cup of life and then wrest it from us.
Our lush, green splendor of youth soon turns crimson,
Then fades, withers, turns brittle and flutters to earth.
Our shell of vitality and being, our blood,
Veins, tissue, sinew and bone all surrender to death
That’s bleak as a winter landscape.  All is finished.

Yet sometimes restless spirits glimmer into view.

 What are apparitions but words and deeds

Charged with an emotional intensity
That transcend the physical bonds of time.
If words and deeds survive us, why can’t the mind
As well wander leisurely through corridors of time?
If in death we’d have an eternity to dream,
Given time we could weave tapestries of triumph
From life’s skeins of despair, and confound the Gods.

While You Sleep (a Rondo)

While you sleep
A thousand different couples fall in love.
A young man begs "a shrine of hers to keep,"
A lock of hair, perhaps a scented glove.
She smiles, complies and sighs, but soon she'll weep,
While you sleep.

While you sleep
A thousand sordid rendezvous take place.
A wife slips out of bed to lightly creep
A few doors down.  To her shame and disgrace
She finds her love's made vows that he won't keep,
While you sleep.

While you sleep
A frightening cataclysm is unleashed.
A earthquake's shaking terror.  Death will reap
A bumper crop tonight.  The screams soon ceased.
Man's God has slaughtered men as man does sheep,
While you sleep.

While you sleep
A soul ascends her way to heaven.  Soon
A blind, indifferent God will end her sleep.
A callous slap.  A harp that's out of tune;
She starts, awakes, observes.  Proceeds to weep,
While you sleep.

Won't you sleep.
Please.
Only in our dreams
Is disillusionment a stranger.