Friday, May 17, 2013

Truth is a Sad Song (a sonnet of insomnia)


Sometimes, when lay awake at night and can't fall asleep, I compose - usually sonnets - in my mind. Sometimes I forget them, sometimes I write them down like this one from the night of May 14.

The Truth is a Sad Song 

Is this what life is really all about?
A tickle, a wiggle, a squirt and out it pops!

It cries, then strides...until, one day it shouts: 
"My God! Must it really suddenly stop 
like this?  It seems like I have hardly begun!

The things I feel I need to do, they drop 
to the floor and all my shattered work is done!

"All is vanity...", the Preacher* said, 
"vanity and a striving after wind!"

Don't ask what happens to you when you're dead! 
Ask where it all begins, then you'll know where it ends! 

"The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong...**"
The truth is that the truth is a sad song!

*  That is, the author(s) of the book of Ecclesiastes
**Ecclesiastes 9:11

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