Night vigil

 

I’m not saying I advocate sleep deprivation.  I  have read all of the articles about the many health hazards that brings.  But I just love the wee small hours of the morning when the house is totally quiet.  On those days where I have no responsibilities  and if I were allowed to live on my own internal time clock I would opt for staying up really really late, sleep til some reasonable time in the morning, then take a nice long nap in the afternoon.  Anyway, I loved this poem that I read last week.

 

Vigil

by Dennis O'Driscoll

Life is too short to sleep through.
Stay up late, wait until the sea of traffic ebbs,
until noise has drained from the world
like blood from the cheeks of the full moon.
Everyone else around you has succumbed:
they lie like tranquillized pets on a vet's table;
they languish on hospital trolleys and friends' couches,
on iron beds in hostels for the homeless,
under feather duvets at tourist B&Bs.
turns repetitious. You are your own voice-over.
You are alone in the bone-weary tower
of your bleary-eyed, blinking lighthouse,
watching the spillage of tide on the shingle inlet.
You are the single-minded one who hears
time shaking from the clock's fingertips
like drops, who watches its hands
chop years into diced seconds,
who knows that when the church bell
tolls at 2 or 3 it tolls unmistakably for you.
You are the sole hand on deck when
temperatures plummet and the hull
of an iceberg is jostling for prominence.
Your confidential number is the life-line
where the sedated long-distance voices
of despair hold out muzzily for an answer.
You are the emergency services' driver
ready to dive into action at the first
warning signs of birth or death.
You spot the crack in night's façade
even before the red-eyed businessman
on look-out from his transatlantic seat.
You are the only reliable witness to when
the light is separated from the darkness,
who has learned to see the dark in its true
colours, who has not squandered your life.

"Vigil" by Dennis O'Driscoll, from "New and Selected Poems, 2004