ANNOUNCING an opportunity to remember Wayne Hening:

Consider contributing to the support of the new Wayne Hening lectureship to be delivered at the Presidential symposium at each WASM congress. We are seeking to establish a reasonable large fund so that very conservative investment interest suffices to cover the costs of the lectureship.

Your generous contributions will be much appreciated.

To contribute please send funds by cheque to the following adress:

World Association of Sleep Medicine
Paracelsus-Elena-Klinik
Klinikstraße 16
34128 Kassel
Germany

In addition anyone interested who has not already done so may still add to the book of remembrances. To sign the book of remembrance please enter comments, photos, videos. Your comments will be placed on the WASM website within the next 24 hours. Please click here. Wayne was our brilliant collegue and dear friend. We fortunate ones who knew him: share here our memories of his life that so much enriched our own. To sign the book of remembrance please enter comments, photos, videos. Your comments will be placed on the WASM website within the next 24 hours. Please click here.

In memoriam published in Sleep Medicine:

(Sleep Medicine in press reproduced with permission)

–Wayne Hening
At Rumi’s Tomb, 14 May 2006

Around me flow the women,
lined faces, upraised arms, palms looking up,
covered heads, long grey dresses,
some just peeking through a black veil,
emitting the murmur
of constant prayer
like the water of fountains
smooth and sweet,
renewed despite age

The crowds
in constant motion, yet there is something
quiet and peaceful here,
like a garden,
like looking
over the rose garden behind
the tomb, like the fountains washing
a thousand hands and preparing them
to receive

I find a stillness here
under the watchful expression
of elegant script and graceful design
summoning in verse and invocation
the concentrated spirit of the serried
coffins
their turbans proclaiming
the joy of transmission

Rumi, I’m told, looked to death
as a marriage, so here
we celebrate with him and partake
of his gestures, dancing along,
if only with hidden steps
caught in the sunburst
shock of his poetry,
his verses like a subtle knife
cutting through the buzzing air
of the market
to open a window into
a deeper world