By DAHLIA TERA

We sleep for a third of our life:
In an 80-year life, we spend about 26 years in bed,
Meaning between 9.000 and 10.000days!

Sleep is a need of our body and of our mind,
A physical and mental necessity
Whatever those say that adhere to the proverb:
‘Who sleep does not catch fish’
(‘The early bird gets the worm’)

Sometimes you feel it like a waste of time,
You get up very early and run busy all day;
Sometimes you feel it like a benevolent rest,
You laze sleepily under the blankets, slumbering.
Sleep, both matters of science and of poetry.

That of sleep is a boundless universe
Full of mysteries: dreams and nightmares.
A disturbing and delicate charm
Which inspired a large number
Of poets, writers, artists…
From Homer to Goya, from Shakespeare to Baudelaire.

What lies behind one of the most fascinating
Phenomena of our existence?
Sleep to remember? Sleep to forget?
In any case, a copious constellation of emotions.

Sometimes we call it eagerly:
It calms our anxiety,
It dries our tears, caresses out wounds,
It gives us the peace of oblivion;
It immerses us in this infinite space,
‘Forgetting’ everything
In the arms of the invisible god Hypnos
With his son Morpheus.

Sometimes we strongly reject it,
We want to listen to the sounds of the night,
To the love songs of the crickets,
To reflect about the sense of the existence
With that feeling of panic of belonging to the Universe,
To relive sublime moments……..

Sinking into the alchemical bath
Sweetening painful memories,
Stimulating creativity,
Allowing to recover energy…

And now taking sleep by the hand…..let me deliver you this beautiful and touching sonnet poem by JOHN KEATS (1795 – 1821), English Romantic lyric poet, ‘TO SLEEP’. The action of sleeping is here associated with a place of wellness and calmness in comparison with the troubles of the daytime. Therefore, throughout the poem, there is a constant tension between the daytime and the nighttime.

Don’t sleep … and enjoy reading!

SONNET TO SLEEP

O soft embalmer of the still midnight!
Shutting, with careful fingers and benign,
Our gloom-pleas’d eyes, embower’d from the light,
Enshaded in forgetfulness divine;

O soothest Sleep! if so it please thee, close,
In midst of this thine hymn, my willing eyes.
Or wait the Amen, ere thy poppy throws
Around my bed its lulling charities;

Then save me, or the passed day will shine,
Upon my pillow, breeding many woes;
Save me from curious Conscience, that still hoards

Its strength for darkness, burrowing like a mole;
Turn the key deftly in the oiled wards,
And seal the hushed casket of my soul.

…

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