All night

I’ve read all night, and now dawn

rolls grey to the east, with little sound

this hour to disquieten me,

only the last whispers of rain

or eavesdroppings of artless thought.

I have renounced all hope of sleep.

She’s a strange mistress, Insomnia.

It is still, and twilit quiet, and I’m lost

in her arms, reading this restless time

away, away back to the old Egyptians,

remembering their first creation mound

and that earliest light. I am so far back

in mind, so lost in the seeps of rain,

that I almost miss the clockwork

of the awakening rhythms: the jet thrust

of the early flight, the trucks and traffic

along Buffelsfontein Road,

the mind-made worlds of profit and loss,

and the timetables they strive to keep.

 - Brian Walter