Pause for poetry:
Stephen Chin /1
Sleep
By Stephen Chin
To rest and recover from the labour and stress of each day, I die: temporarily.
To rest and recover from the labours and stresses of a lifetime, I die: permanently.
Indeed, sleep resembles and, is very like death.
Every night when I fall asleep, where do I go? It is no flight of fancy to think that
I go back to my first dwelling in the world when I first came into existence in that
uniquely fantastical oasis of my mother’s womb. There, I was protected, fed, kept
warm, comfortable and loved.
And to state that I do remember those months of blissful life. Of course not mentally.
My brain was just being assembled and growing and, was like new film in a camera before
any pictures are taken. But my body’s nerves and ability to feel do remember those nine
blissful first months of my life. After a good night’s sleep, I awake in the morning: new born again.
We are such stuff as dreams are made of. And our little life is rounded with a sleep.*
* As told by Prospero in Shakespeare’s The Tempest Act 4, scene 1, 148–158
Feature image: PxHere
Read other articles by Stephen Chin
Stephen Chin was born in Singapore in 1930. His early schooling was interrupted for five years by the Japanese occupation of South East Asia. After the war he completed his schooling and left for Germany to study at the Hochschule fuer Musik in Stuttgart. After three years he obtained a scholarship to continue his studies in Poland at the Warsaw Conservatory of Music He lived in Paris for four years and four in London before settling in Canada where he taught piano from 1967 to his retirement in 1995. He writes as one of his hobbies.
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