Insomnia by Billy Collins

After counting all the sheep in the world
I enumerate the wildebeests, snails,
camels, skylarks, etc.,

then I add up all the zoos and aquariums,
country by country.

By early light I am asleep
in a nightmare about drowning in the Flood,
yelling across the rising water
at preoccupied Noah as his wondrous
ark sails by and begins to grow smaller.

Now a silhouette on the horizon,
the only boat on earth is disappearing.

As I rise and fall on the rocking waves,
I concentrate on the giraffe couple,
their necks craning over the roof,
to keep my life from flashing before me.

After all the animals wink out of sight
I float on my back, eyes closed.
I picture all the fish in creation
leaping a fence in a field of water,
one colorful species after another.    

The poem is about the struggle to get to sleep. The desperation of the condition is shown by how the poet begins to “enumerate the wildebeests, snails… etc” the fact that “etc” is added shows that the sufferer has counted every animal on earth and we can assume this because the list of animals is not exactly obvious –“wildebeests, snails, camels, skylarks”. This "counting" of all the animals in the world, shows just how hard it is to go to sleep and when he finally does the “counting”,it seems to influence the dream, or rather “nightmare” he has when he eventually gets to sleep at “early light”.

The imagery used in the third stanza till the last stanza is incredible but justified by the fact that it is a dream. Because the poet has expressed that he has fallen into a nightmare the reader expect dark stormy imagery to match our idea of a “nightmare”- although he is drowning he never describes the feeling of drowning, instead he describes all the things that distract him from drowning, similarly to how counting the animals distracted him from the fact that he couldn’t sleep. The poem almost seems to describe a peaceful drowning –“I rise and fall on the rocking waves” the motion described, is a peaceful motion as the word “rocking” relates to the motion used to put babies to sleep. But then this is slightly contrasted by the fact that he is “yelling across the water”- “yelling” implies desperation and shows how the poem progresses from a peaceful scenario to a desperate one and back to a peaceful scenario once again. “After all the animals wink out of sight, I float on my back eyes closed” the peace that descends after this part of the poem appears to be a result of hopelessness, he didn’t make it onto the ark so he accepts the fact that he is left to drown. Some people believe that being left off the ark symbolises not being good enough- as according to the bible story only those who were good and sin-free made it onto the ark. Also, the ark could be a representation of sleep, the fact that he never gets onto the ark could symbolise how he can’t get to sleep, the irony would be that he’s even an insomniac in his sleep.

Finally, the structure the poem complements the title 'Insomnia' as the poem has different lengths for most stanzas, the poem appears restless on the page as there is no visibly constant structure, the poem is an insomnia personified. To conclude, the poem can either be taken literally as a man’s struggles to get to sleep which in my opinion is the most understandable interpretation or others may see the poem as a representation of hopeless struggles in the poets life, the only cure for insomnia is to get to sleep but if you are an insomniac you can’t get to sleep, similar to the many problems in our lives that we eventually accept because there is no solution.

 

By Clarke Dhana