One day along the road, I met,
slightly balding and heavyset,
a black-robed man, with sandaled feet,
leading a donkey that was more bone than meat.

He stopped me, then, and asked politely
(though his twinkling eye made it slightly slyly)
if this road led to the county fair.
“It does,” I cried, “you’re nearly there.”

He told me that he’d come to see
The Man Who Slept But Didn’t Dream.
“A fearsome sight, or so I’m told,
for if he doesn’t dream, has he a soul?”

The way was short but the light grew dim
so I offered to accompany him.
This suggestion he took with a rakish laugh,
and side by side we trod down the path.

He looked a monk, maybe a priest,
but surely a man of God at least.
I gave the donkey a friendly pat
but the look it returned took me aback.

He caught me glancing at his clothes
and said, “Well, what do you suppose?
Am I a beggar, a knave, a wandering cleric?
Or maybe something more esoteric?

A magician, a fortune-teller, a necromancer?
A spell-weaver, demon-raiser or shadow-dancer?
No, my boy, I’m none of these.
Just a man who seeks out curiosities.

I’ve traveled far and wide to find
freaks, not of nature, but of the mind.”
At this, he stopped, turned to me and said,
“Would you care to rest and share some bread?”

I nodded as I looked to the sky,
for something had surely gone awry.
We had set out just as evening fell,
but now we dwelt in full twilight’s spell.

“Please,” he said, “come sit down here.”
And next to him a merry fire appeared.
Strangely, though, when I took my seat
beside the blaze, there was no heat.

Of course I questioned this occurrence
and all the oddities concurrent,
but I found this strange man captivating,
and the loaf he proffered had me salivating.

With some cheese he drew from his pack
(which was still fastened to the donkey’s back)
we set ourselves to this simple dinner
and I asked again what brought him hither.

“Ah, the man who sleeps but doesn’t number
any spectral visions amid his nightly slumber.
Most men are twinned, a happy struggle,
‘tween their waking selves and their dreaming double.

Just as Eastern poets speak of yang and yin,
dreaming helps us tame the demon within.
For, make no mistake, man, comprised, but is
the combination of the holy and the sacrilege.

When dreaming man enters a space
unenlightened by God’s beauteous grace.
His laws don’t hold there, His morals bend.
Men are free to sin at judgement’s end.

If dreaming, say, gave one leave to kill
(or conduct some other depraved, nefarious thrill)
then to me this seems quite as it should,
for it’s unhealthy to be always well and good.

Man needs release from morality’s grip,
so he is permitted, in dreams, to slip
to depths of gross, crude infamy, 
so long as he doesn’t produce them consciously.”

“But why,” I asked, “did this man spark
the lengthy journey upon which you’ve embarked?
So he doesn’t dream, why make a fuss?
Why trudge to see him through mud and dust?”

He stared into the cold fire and, whispering, said,
(while I watched the flames dance on his bald forehead)
“You foolish boy, you’ve not learned a thing.
You’ve not paid attention, you’ve not been listening.

If this man doesn’t dream there’s no telling what might
occur to him in the long, dark Godless night.
Vicious murder, cruel rapine;
a living, breathing example of moral decline.”

He turned to me then, and I caught a glimmer,
the recognition of which made me violently shiver,
of what might’ve been his real reason for stopping
and talking with me while I was out walking.

His visage transformed into a hard, dead-eyed sneer,
and I knew his prior good humour was but a veneer.
His voice came like a snarl, my heart’s beat was stilled,
“Don’t you see, boy? The Man With No Dreams must be killed.”

Too late, I saw the knife, drawn by reflex,
its cold blade, poised, pressed against the skin of my neck,
and the last thing I heard before life withdrew,
was, “The Man Who Sleeps But Doesn’t Dream is you.”

Looking back on it now, I see he was right:
I slept dreamless sleep night after night.
And though I had the capacity to envision such thought,
evil and violent I was most certainly not.

So beware, dear reader, of any man you might meet
with bulging black robe atop sandaled feet.
He may peer into your soul and not like what he spies,
so if you see him out walking, best walk right on by.