6.
Discussing the question, some time ago, with an old
friend, she gave me her never-failing remedy for sleeplessness,
which was to imagine herself performing some trivial
action over and over again, until, her mind becoming
disgusted with the monotony
of life, sleep drew the curtain. Her favourite device
was to imagine a picture not hanging quite plumb
upon the wall, and then to proceed to straighten it.
This I tried -- though putting pictures straight is
no habit of mine -- but it was of no avail.
I imagined the picture on the wall without difficulty,
and gave it a few deft
touches, but this set me thinking of pictures in general,
and then I remembered an art exhibition I had attended
with my friend T. and what he said, and what I said,
and I wondered how T. was faring
these days, and whether his son was still at school.
And so it went on, 
until
I found myself
meditating on cheese, or spiritualism,
or the Rocky Mountains -- but no sleep! Somewhere
in that limbo
which Earth describes in Prometheus Unbound,
that vague region filled with
Dreams
and the light imaginings of men,
is
the dreary
phantom
of an unstraightened picture upon a wall. And there
it shall stay, for I have no further use for it.
