A man with some authentic worries
And many vain and silly ones,
I am well-schooled in sleeplessness;
I know it from the inside out.
I breathe, and I know what’s at stake.
But still sometimes I’m sane and sound,
However heart or head may ache;
I go to sleep when I lie down.
With no determined care to breathe,
I breathe and live and sleep and take
A sabbath from my weariness.
I rest in an unasking trust
Like clouds and ponds and stones and trees
The long-arising day will break
If I should die before I wake.
– Wendell Berry, ‘This Day: Collected and New Sabbath Poems, 1995, I.
