Sleep's Powers

Author: Jacqueline Risset

Translator: Jennifer Moxley

Publisher: Ugly Duckling Presse (2008)

Sleep is the loam of dreams, the material in which they grow. But it is also something more: something hidden, made obscure by the accumulation of images—a sort of grand dream which, because of its intense and manifold nature, is undecipherable. Compared to sleep, dreams offer us a free, easy, almost anodyne, show. Sleep abides from the start in the interior tissue out of which we are formed. Moments of astonishment, precious passages filled with rapid, disconnected symbols—light birds like late evening swallows—a single swallow still squawking overhead, halfway to sleep.