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1.15am


The rain returns with belated vengeance
Whilst the pancake clang’s still out there.
Had planned to break the habit tonight
But have been thwarted by a question.

Is insomnia a friend or an enemy?
Why should the mind crave extra time to think;
What should it hope to find in that surplus
For which waking hours will not suffice?

“Je marche dans le nuit, je prefere rien voir”
Except, alone in the dark, the eye walks inward
Scouting a landscape of fret, trivia, sex,
People, solutions to great problems, all forgotten
To be solved again some other night, when
The rain beats on the window or the mullahs
Call to prayer or a phone rings at random
Unanswerable hours of the night sky falling
In on you.

Maybe they’ve put questions in my head
Who live on other stars, which they are asking,
Not I, appropriating brain space wasted by day.
I’m thinking thoughts for them, the dead,
The ones who know me and yet I know them not.