The night had no curtain, the dark had no bed,
When the sister of certain to the village was led.
Visitation has come from a land far away,
Where the plague of insomnia turned night into day.
Absent voice broke to fractions, when she warned the small town,
“The dreamless destruction is now coming down.”

The Veche of Elders laughed at the Indian’s dread,
“If we do not sleep, we’ll expand life instead!
More time for our science, more hours to create!”
But they did not foresee the cruel twist of their fate.
For the worst of the plague was not weariness deep,
But the loss of the memory when eyes would not sleep.

First went the childhood, the names of the trees,
The taste of the soup and the hum of the bees.
The past became vapor, the future grew blind,
As the stillness of midnight eroded the mind.
So they stayed up all night making roosters of gold,
To combat the silence that took a firm hold.

× × ×

To fight the great fading, the Colonel arose,
And wrote down the lexicon everyone knows.
He labeled the table, the clock, and the wall:
This is an anvil, this is the hall.
On the neck of the cow they tied paper and twine:
This animal milks, and the milk is divine.

The town became populated with tags in the light,
A city of signs in an infinite night.
They lived in a present where nothing could stick,
Where the gears of the brain played a terrible trick.
They forgot how to pray, they forgot how to weep,
Trapped in the kingdom of permanent sleep.

They placed a great bell at the edge of the swamp,
To warn all the travelers of their strange camp.
“If you enter our gates, do not close your two eyes,
For the air of the borough is full of goodbyes.”
They lived by illusion, they lived by the clock,
While the ghosts of the past came to whisper and mock.

× × ×

Then into the village of wide-open eyes,
Came old drunk magician in a gypsy disguise.
He brought a small flask of a liquid so bright,
To cure the poor town of its permanent night.
He gave them a drink from his magical store,
And the keys of the memory opened once more.

The walls became walls, and the cows became cows,
And the weight of the dreams settled over their brows.
They fell into beds with a thunderous sigh,
As the curtains of darkness returned to the sky.

The roosters of gold were all put in their chest,
And the life freed of mold
could finally rest.