Rip Van Winkle Asks If It’d Not Been Better To Have Slept Forever Poem by Raj Arumugam

Rip Van Winkle Asks If It’d Not Been Better To Have Slept Forever



you know I slept
twenty years
and woke to find
all things changed


when I sleep now,
though only a few hours
each night,
I wonder
if it had not been better
if I had slept forever


I had not known
trouble in my long sleep;
and I was not bewildered
by a world
that is strange and distant
though I move in it all day long


I had not known
any care or worry;
nor had I to think where
my next meal was to come from
or hang over things like
what today’s contemporaries
fret about:
things like retirement funds
and aged care; and a will
that will be ample and fair


I had not known
people of strange ways
when I slept;
I had not to condone
the conceited and those whose
only concern is self-interest;
and men and women of twisted emotion
and hell-bent on murder and blood
and lust;
and a lawn that must be trimmed


and in my bear-sleep
I had no encounter
with the fool, the arrogant, the ambitious
and the tyrant and the greedy;
all I knew in my long sleep
was quiet, oblivion and bliss
and so I ask myself often
as I sit in the shade of the tree:
I wonder
if it had not been better
if I had slept forever?

COMMENTS OF THE POEM
Rakesh Bedi 18 June 2009

Very genuine treatment of an unanswerable query! The best part is, it remains unreplied! !

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rago rago 18 June 2009

very nicely penned........ we need in ph...... please do not sit under a tree and forget yourself.............

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