Dreams, April 1981

so it is death is the condition of infinite form— the rebellion of particulars, ourselves and each thing, even ideas, against that infinitude, is the story of finitude—the dream of the children harvested in a harvester-machine there are the real voice and the voice imagined and both have a reality, but the latter is out of it the ladder of things never accept gifts from the gods —Hesiod’s bitter-sweet sense of it— rings true and doesn’t settle the sea-shore down to where the heart breaks or is bronzed ‘I am happy,’ the man said, ‘because the toad of the morning is the worst thing I’ll find today’ an d CBC’s TV c ritic says, ‘television is the Shakespeare of the 20th century’ red lilies fall on the carpet and Art Tatum, drawing his art out of hymns, wanted more dissonance perfect there are knives in the air all around the poorly loved their lives follow life back into stone and they dream a sweeter consonance at the centre the art of a screaming and demented oyster