try to remember
people you have ever known
back to earliest
But some nights I could not fish, and on those nights I was cold-awake and said my prayers over and over and tried to pray for all the people I had ever known. That took up a great amount of time, for if you try to remember all the people you have ever known, going back to the earliest thing you remember — which was, with me, the attic of the house where I was born and my mother and father’s wedding cake in a tin box hanging from one of the rafters, and, in the attic, jars of snakes and other specimens that my father had collected as a boy and preserved in alcohol, the alcohol sunken in the jars so the backs of some of the snakes and specimens were exposed and had turned white — if you thought back that far, you remembered a great many people. If you prayed for all of them, saying a Hail Mary and an Our Father for each one, it took a long time and finally it would be light, and then you could go to sleep, if you were in a place where you could sleep in the daylight.
From the short story, Now I lay Me in The Nick Adams Stories by Ernest Hemingway (New York, Scribner: New York, 1972).
I get up in the morning and see what happened over night.
Hemingway have seen what happened overnight as well.
In his short story, A Clean Well Lighted Place, Mr. Hemingway write, “Now, without thinking further, he would go home to his room. He would lie in the bed and finally, with daylight, he would go to sleep. After all, he said to himself, it is probably only insomnia. Many must have it.”
Going to bed, knowing everything that could happen overnight, who could sleep.
I lie in the bed and finally, with daylight, I can go to sleep.
After all, I say to myself, it is probably only insomnia. Many must have it.
No Haiku For You 