Sleep Interrupted and Rilke’s Panther

After a fitful night I got up and wrote a poem called Sleep Interrupted, which is below and on a page of its own.

Sleep interrupted

Leap into the void of slumber

Fall down the rabbit hole

Slip through scudding cumuli

Descend into docile dreams

Or crash through thunderclouds

Into noxious night terrors

Run barefoot across meadows of mimosa

Or through forests of threatening thorns

Chased by unseen horrors

Until the early hours of morning

When shadows lurk

And unseen fingers

Prod and poke

Into jagged wakefulness

Mindful of every sound

Every shadowy vibration

Besieged by lightshows

Photopsia fireworks

Figments of phantasms

That fade with the onset

Of Aurora’s light

I am finding that, no matter what time I go to bed, I wake at odd times throughout the night, sometimes with a start, and have to get out of bed, quite often as early as five o’clock, as I can’t return to a comfortable state. Fortunately, early morning is the time when I am most inspired and able to write. A benefit of this early rising is watching the morning develop in my garden, of which I have a perfect view. The downside is that I become more and more tired after lunch but cannot nap in the day or get to sleep if I go to bed early.

When I used to visit my parents, I was astonished that my mum got up in the early hours of the morning and did the housework. I only found out because she woke me up one morning when she started to vacuum the stairs of their small council maisonette! My sister recently told me about a colleague who has the same problem, only she bakes. The upside is that she brings tins full of cakes and biscuits to work.

I would be interested to know if this is an age thing or whether it can occur any time in life; and is it just women who suffer from early morning syndrome? My mum has dementia and is now in a care home. I often wonder, when I am looking out of my window at five or six o’clock, what Mum is doing: is she lying in bed, reliving her past; pacing her room as small as a prison cell; or is she wandering the corridors in the same way as she does all day, every day? She reminds me of the panther in Rilke’s poem, which I have translated. Unfortunately, however much I press carriage return for an additional line between stanzas, the layout remains as you see it below; it should be divided into three stanzas, of four lines each.

The Panther by Rainer Maria Rilke

His gaze has grown so tired from ceaseless

Passing of the bars that it can hold nought else.

It seems as if there were a thousand bars;

Beyond those thousand bars there is no world.

The soft pad of his supple, sturdy pace,

Turning in the very smallest circles,

Is like a powerful dance around a core,

In which a great strength stands stunned.

Now and then the pupils’ veil slides open

Quietly – an image enters, penetrates

The tense stillness of the limbs –

And ceases in the heart.

Translated by Kim Russell