Leave me to Nightmares

Give me to the nightmare’s mercy,

Give me comfort in its fear,

For all the horrors I can dream

In dullest form appear.

All the times I woke up fearing

Desperately for my life

Are really nothing if compared

To true accounts of strife.

Any terror I imagine

Has at least its sickening worth

Matched in harrowing tales that happened

Truly on this earth.

A horror movie cannot match

The horrors of a history book

Whose pages shake with screams of pain

Where cameras dare not look.

And every nightmare has its roots

In horrors people lived for real.

No matter which, each nightmare is

Much easier to feel.

My fevered mind is more at ease

In throes of nightmares as it sleeps

Than knowing just the smallest bit

Of what the world keeps.

So let me struggle terrified

Against these crushing, vicious dreams.

For though I shudder in my fear,

I do not hear their screams.