76 Dreams poems

I am dreaming of a house just like this one but larger and opener to the trees, nighter than day and higher than noon, and you, visiting, knocking to get in, hoping for icy milk or hot tea or whatever it is you like. For each night is a long drink in a short glass. A drink of blacksound water, such a rush and fall of lonesome no form can contain it. And if it isn’t night yet, though I seem to recall that it is, then it is not for everyone. Did you receive my invitation? It is not for everyone. Please come to my house lit by leaf light. It’s like a book with bright pages filled with flocks and glens and groves and overlooked by Pan, that seductive satyr in whom the fish is also cooked. A book that took too long to read but minutes to unread— that is—to forget. Strange are the pages thus. Nothing but the hope of company. I made too much pie in expectation. I was hoping to sit with you in a tree house in a nightgown in a real way. Did you receive my invitation? Written in haste, before leaf blinked out, before the idea fully formed. An idea like a storm cloud that does not spill or arrive but moves silently in a direction. Like a dark book in a long life with a vague hope in a wood house with an open door.

Rotten, he says, motherly how could you miss that Like a ragamuffin with no eyes his body has a dark spot Like doing laundry all day long he is being nowhere Cottage cheese runs out his mouth Another one and another one that doll can crawl his insides like an awning Motherly if mother mother as if spread If I could break the hymen of his ear with I can't stand you I won't say a thing and I won't notice god you are the softest kind of jerk and yesterday is gone and I had nothing to do with it

This one appeared to me in a dream, was forgotten, only to reveal itself on the shower wall this morning. It must have been the water. • That one was on the full moon last night, clear as a bell. Someone projected it there. • This one was on the ground, on crunchy pine needles. The moon projected it there. • I forgot about that one . . . How was I to know it would be significant? • Every time I see this one, I'm angry. It doesn't diminish, either, from that first time. • Oh, that one! To tell you the truth, I never actually saw it, but I could feel it as it was described to me by a blind person over the phone. • This one I spotted on the back of someone's shirt in a crowd before she disappeared. • That one evolved, and is still evolving, on that big, flat rock over there; something scraped it, scratched it, the heat cracked it, the frost coated it, tiny plants took root, sheltering insects, and it rained, and it rained, and by the time I showed up, a butterfly had just flown off. • Not this one again. It makes me so sad . . . • I was glad to receive that one as a gift. So glad, in fact, that I went and had some copies made. • Believe it or not, this one has a sound. Just listen. • Oh, boy—that one! I'll never go there again. • This one often arrives in the smoke of incense. • I tried to turn that one over— it burned my hand. • This one I tried to discard— unsuccessfully, obviously. • That one speaks to me of space, and negative space, of open and filled spaces, and the among that comes between. • Whereas this one is the opposite— you get the picture. • Oh, my goodness— I've never seen that one before! • This one, from what I gather, is an accident. • That one, however, is intended. • This one took some getting to— waiting for the thaw, for instance— but it was well worth it. • That one, well, you can have it. • Whenever this one comes my way, it's déjà vu, but I'm ready for it. • That one is owned by the dentist. • This one has been proven to be a fake, but I still like it. • Alas, I lost that one once, in childhood, and it took me until now to find it. • If you can only have one, choose this one.

Occasionally he wakes, finds the cool cube of his room delirious with colors: blaring daffodils and rigid roses, petals a soft, translucent red like the inside of an eyelid. By the window, a clock's expressionless face near glossy skins of magazines, a telephone the color of frozen milk or silence, the color of old. He is melting, his bones grown paper-light, they travel over the bed's pale hills, the woman who's come to wash him. The ceiling is a landscape bleeding white as he floats through the muted winter sky, a boundless symbol of nothing. The woman draws the blind.

In the town where I was born lived a woman and her daughter, who walked in their sleep. One night, while silence enfolded the world, the woman and her daughter, walking, yet asleep, met in their mist-veiled garden. And the mother spoke, and she said:  “At last, at last, my enemy! You by whom my youth was destroyed—who have built up your life upon the ruins of mine!  Would I could kill you!” And the daughter spoke, and she said:  “O hateful woman, selfish and old!  Who stand between my freer self and me!  Who would have my life an echo of your own faded life!  Would you were dead!” At that moment a cock crew, and both women awoke.  The mother said gently, “Is that you, darling?”  And the daughter answered gently, “Yes, dear.”

Last night in a dream you came to me. We were young again and you were smiling, happy in the way a sparrow in spring hops from branch to branch. I took you in my arms and swung you about, so carefree was my youth. What can I say? That time wears away, draws its lines on every feature? That we wake to dark skies whose only answer is rain, cold as the years that stretch behind us, blurring this window far from you.

In a dream I returned to the river of bees Five orange trees by the bridge and Beside two mills my house Into whose courtyard a blindman followed The goats and stood singing Of what was older Soon it will be fifteen years He was old he will have fallen into his eyes I took my eyes A long way to the calendars Room after room asking how shall I live One of the ends is made of streets One man processions carry through it Empty bottles their Image of hope It was offered to me by name Once once and once In the same city I was born Asking what shall I say He will have fallen into his mouth Men think they are better than grass I return to his voice rising like a forkful of hay He was old he is not real nothing is real Nor the noise of death drawing water We are the echo of the future On the door it says what to do to survive But we were not born to survive Only to live

On the first page of my dreambook It’s always evening In an occupied country. Hour before the curfew. A small provincial city. The houses all dark. The storefronts gutted. I am on a street corner Where I shouldn’t be. Alone and coatless I have gone out to look For a black dog who answers to my whistle. I have a kind of Halloween mask Which I am afraid to put on.

At first he seemed a child, dirt on his lip and the sun lighting up his hair behind him. All around us, the hesitation of year-rounders who know the warmer air will bring crowds. No one goes to their therapist to talk about how happy they are, but soon I’d be back in the dugout telling my batting coach how the view outside my igloo seemed to be changing, as if the night sky were all the light there is. Now, like two babies reaching through the watery air to touch soft fingers to soft forehead, like blind fish sensing a familiar fluttering in the waves, slowly, by instinct, we became aware. Off-field, outside the park, beyond the gates, something was burning. The smell was everywhere.

Unstable dream, according to the place, Be steadfast once, or else at least be true. By tasted sweetness make me not to rue The sudden loss of thy false feignèd grace. By good respect in such a dangerous case Thou broughtest not her into this tossing mew But madest my sprite live, my care to renew, My body in tempest her succour to embrace. The body dead, the sprite had his desire, Painless was th'one, th'other in delight. Why then, alas, did it not keep it right, Returning, to leap into the fire? And where it was at wish, it could not remain, Such mocks of dreams they turn to deadly pain.