In the Siberian tundra of mind
the sentinel permafrost of reason
is thawing in these torrid times
of online lies and rising oxycodone emissions
releasing a plague of pounding wings,
the bacterial bats of ignorance
and the viral owls of folly,
while the lynx of necromancy lurks in wait
and the housecat of banality
peers into the dark.
Mere figments, probably,
and nothing to worry about.
Or maybe, as sages used to say,
they’re tokens and totems,
animated proxies of vile denizens
that swarm in dark cesspools of the heart,
predators that would gobble us like chum
if we swam too near them.
But the sleeper writhes and sweats.
He’s burning hot, and not from fever.
This pandemonium of bats and owls
must be his mind’s misprision
of what transpires outside the prison of his sleep—
an all-earth conflagration
that raises a din like rumbling wings
while fleeing beasts and children
shriek like the dead.
When the body is consumed, so is its tenant.
Left to his self-euthanizing sleep
he’ll die by phantom teeth and beaks and claws.
Do we risk shaking him awake
to a fiery world beyond all hope—
or crueler still, a world that might yet be saved?
An oil lamp flared when wry Voltaire lay dying.
“Les flammes, déjà?” he asked.
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Editor’s note. Translation of the title of this etching and aquatint print (and the poem): The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters (print published in 1799). The print is Plate 43 from the series Los Caprichos by Francisco Jose de Goya y Lucientes.
