ON AWAKENING ONE MORNING
by Michael Langston

I think I could lie and sleep forever,
Forsake the world and its light of day,
And enter upon the darkness of an eternal night;
Let the sounds of wakefulness at last disappear
Till only silence remains;
And consciousness gone and thought passed away,
Fall into the abyss of a deepening sleep…
Until sleep becomes as death;
Existence extinguished, all life put out,
Become the nothingness from which all things arose
And to which everything must pass:
  To awake no more to see
  The glaring light of another day.