ELEVEN LAST SONGS (VII - XI)
vii.
Sleep Cometh Nigh after Hermann Hesse
Wearied from quotidian care,
Kindly now my ardent longing —
Soft as bedside nursery prayer —
Greets the nighttime’s starry thronging.
Hands, leave ye all toil behind;
Brow, leave off thy myriad thinkings;
All ye senses thus resigned:
Lose yourselves in slumberous sinkings.
Soul unguarded, unaware;
Float thou free in flights o’er-soaring
Night’s enchanted crown of air —
Life’s deep thousandfolds exploring!
viii.
Upon Going to Sleep
Day, you’ve drained and depleted me.
Now all my fervent yearnings want no more
than to be lost, enfolded in the kindness
of night’s starry arms, like an exhausted child.
Hands, leave off from your doings, all.
Head, forget the pains of thought.
All you fleshy faculties now
come sink yourselves in somnolence.
And you, my Soul, without disguise —
you’ll fly at last on untrammeled wings
through darkling magic spheres
to live life’s depths in the boundlessness of night.
ix.
At the Time of When the Sleep Falls
now which the that who daytime me myself tired made has have
should mine me ought eager hankerings ardent appetencies crave desirous it demand
good-natured affibili-cordial smilingly benign starred night of luminous-ish heaven-body things
as how like tired as weary-pooped a child all infantile received accept shall listen/see.
you fingered terminal constituents of arm, stop actings doings your accomplishingly do’s;
you front brow forehead you, now disremember all those every cerebration’s mindlings;
all my me of senses wits and faculties now present presently
intend want will themselves to them unto in some sleep-slumber drop sag low abate.
and which my this the soul core spirit psyche marrow mind now unbeguardedly unseen-ish
wants want in free nature open-air al fresco flight to float swim hover levitate
about at in alluring spellbound magic charmed round circle cycle orbit of the spheres the night
low esoteric cavernous abysses thousandfolded closed for shut too life in extant living lifetimes do.
x.
In Twilight after Joseph von Eichendorff (1788-1857)
Through joy and hardship wended we
Together hand in hand:
Yet now at rest our wanderings be
Above the silent land.
Around us bend the sloping vales,
How soon day’s airs engloom,
Two skylarks yet ascend o’er swales
To dream in balmèd brume.
Draw nigh; leave them their wingèd play,
For us, ‘tis time for sleep.
Yet let us not fall lorn astray
In solitude so deep.
Ye boundless peace! tranquility
Profound in twilight’s breath!
How tired and wander-weary we —
Could this, perchance, be death?
xi.
Eventide Sonnet
Across far wastes of woe and realms of joy
We wandered ever long, thy hand in mine;
Yet now may we find rest from wandering’s cloy,
Bestilled above this hushèd country shrine.
The kneeling valleys nod, encircling us
In ever-darkling airs; and yet, two larks
Ascend the gloaming haze, melodious,
To soar through heaven’s night in perfumed arcs.
Come close, and leave them to their flutt’ring song,
for now, in dusk’s cool shadow, sleep hides near;
We must not loose our lonesome way along
This solitude’s encrepusculed frontier.
O farthest peace! O vast in sunset’s depth!
Such weariness! — might this perhaps be death?
-
-Jason Wingate
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