Stirring Science Stories/March 1942/Fear of Sleep

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4071613Stirring Science Stories, March 1942Fear of SleepDonald Allen WollheimEmil Petaja

Fear of Sleep

Let dark dream and crimson shadow
Weave strange tapestries, and though
After these unfold shall come
From a distant doom slow drumming;
Guard against this baleful reckoning,
Credit not its eldritch beckoning. . .
I must seal my soul inside me
Soundly, and no house can hide me.
Clutching out with taloned fingers
Nameless, deathless rancor lingers;
Thinly veiled beyond my dreaming,
Inward seeps titanic screaming
Whilst I stop my inward ears. . .
Knowledge maddens he who hears!

— Emil Petaja