76 Dreams poems

The skin of sleep is thin. It will not hold. Its contents stumble out. A nub of bone lodged in earth at the bottom of a pit. A stranger staring down from the rim. The skin of sleep is thin. It cannot hold. Lost names spill out. Children engraved in ash. A sea of blood. Only you, tenderness, stillborn, beneath the skin of sleep.

Pawnbroker, scavenger, cheapskate, come creeping from your pigeon-filled backrooms, past guns and clocks and locks and cages, past pockets emptied and coins picked from the floor; come sweeping with the rainclouds down the river through the brokenblack windows of factories to avenues where movies whisk through basement projectors and children peel up into the supplejack twilight— there a black-eyed straight-backed drag queen preens, fusses, fixes her hair in a shop window on Prince, a young businessman jingles his change and does his Travis Bickle for a long-faced friend, there on the corner I laughed at a joke Jim made. In the bedroom the moon is a dented spoon, cold, getting colder, so hurry sleep, come creep into bed, let’s get it over with; lay me down and close my eyes and tell me whip, tell me winnow tell me sweet tell me skittish tell me No tell me no such thing tell me straw into gold tell me crept into fire tell me lost all my money tell me hoarded , verboten , but promise tomorrow I will be profligate, stepping into the sun like a trophy.

As Ann came in one summer’s day, She felt that she must creep, So silent was the clear cool house, It seemed a house of sleep. And sure, when she pushed open the door, Rapt in the stillness there, Her mother sat, with stooping head, Asleep upon a chair; Fast—fast asleep; her two hands laid Loose-folded on her knee, So that her small unconscious face Looked half unreal to be: So calmly lit with sleep’s pale light Each feature was; so fair Her forehead—every trouble was Smoothed out beneath her hair. But though her mind in dream now moved, Still seemed her gaze to rest— From out beneath her fast-sealed lids, Above her moving breast— On Ann; as quite, quite still she stood; Yet slumber lay so deep Even her hands upon her lap Seemed saturate with sleep. And as Ann peeped, a cloudlike dread Stole over her, and then, On stealthy, mouselike feet she trod, And tiptoed out again.

Routines of decaying time fade, and your waking life gets laborious as science. You huddle in, becoming the deathless younger self who will survive your dreams and vanish in surviving. Dream brings on its story at the pace of drift in twilight, sunless color, its settings are believed, a library of wood shingles, plain mythic furniture vivid drone of talk, yet few loves return: trysts seem unkeepable. Urgencies from your time join with the browner suits walking those arcades with you but then you are apart, aghast, beside the numberless defiling down steep fence into an imminence — as in the ancient burrow you, with an ever-changing cast, survive deciding episodes till you are dismissed and a restart of tense summons your waking size out through shreds of story.

I dreamed that, as I wandered by the way, Bare Winter suddenly was changed to Spring, And gentle odours led my steps astray, Mixed with a sound of waters murmuring Along a shelving bank of turf, which lay Under a copse, and hardly dared to fling Its green arms round the bosom of the stream, But kissed it and then fled, as thou mightest in dream. There grew pied wind-flowers and violets, Daisies, those pearled Arcturi of the earth, The constellated flower that never sets; Faint oxlips; tender bluebells, at whose birth The sod scarce heaved; and that tall flower that wets— Like a child, half in tenderness and mirth— Its mother's face with Heaven's collected tears, When the low wind, its playmate's voice, it hears. And in the warm hedge grew lush eglantine, Green cowbind and the moonlight-coloured may, And cherry-blossoms, and white cups, whose wine Was the bright dew, yet drained not by the day; And wild roses, and ivy serpentine, With its dark buds and leaves, wandering astray; And flowers azure, black, and streaked with gold, Fairer than any wakened eyes behold. And nearer to the river's trembling edge There grew broad flag-flowers, purple pranked with white, And starry river buds among the sedge, And floating water-lilies, broad and bright, Which lit the oak that overhung the hedge With moonlight beams of their own watery light; And bulrushes, and reeds of such deep green As soothed the dazzled eye with sober sheen. Methought that of these visionary flowers I made a nosegay, bound in such a way That the same hues, which in their natural bowers Were mingled or opposed, the like array Kept these imprisoned children of the Hours Within my hand,—and then, elate and gay, I hastened to the spot whence I had come, That I might there present it!—Oh! to whom?

In my dream his voice began to fade I had to call him the next day I feel about average he said I’m going out to buy some juice a huge frog was in the driveway a small boat drifting the river flowed in silence

Ere on my bed my limbs I lay, It hath not been my use to pray With moving lips or bended knees; But silently, by slow degrees, My spirit I to Love compose, In humble trust mine eye-lids close, With reverential resignation No wish conceived, no thought exprest, Only a sense of supplication; A sense o'er all my soul imprest That I am weak, yet not unblest, Since in me, round me, every where Eternal strength and Wisdom are. But yester-night I prayed aloud In anguish and in agony, Up-starting from the fiendish crowd Of shapes and thoughts that tortured me: A lurid light, a trampling throng, Sense of intolerable wrong, And whom I scorned, those only strong! Thirst of revenge, the powerless will Still baffled, and yet burning still! Desire with loathing strangely mixed On wild or hateful objects fixed. Fantastic passions! maddening brawl! And shame and terror over all! Deeds to be hid which were not hid, Which all confused I could not know Whether I suffered, or I did: For all seemed guilt, remorse or woe, My own or others still the same Life-stifling fear, soul-stifling shame. So two nights passed: the night's dismay Saddened and stunned the coming day. Sleep, the wide blessing, seemed to me Distemper's worst calamity. The third night, when my own loud scream Had waked me from the fiendish dream, O'ercome with sufferings strange and wild, I wept as I had been a child; And having thus by tears subdued My anguish to a milder mood, Such punishments, I said, were due To natures deepliest stained with sin,— For aye entempesting anew The unfathomable hell within, The horror of their deeds to view, To know and loathe, yet wish and do! Such griefs with such men well agree, But wherefore, wherefore fall on me? To be loved is all I need, And whom I love, I love indeed.

Good God! What did I dream last night? I dreamt I was the moon. I woke and found myself still asleep. It was like this: my face misted up from inside And I came and went at will through a little peephole. I had no voice, no mouth, nothing to express my trouble, except my shadows leaning downhill, not quite parallel. Something needs to be said to describe my moonlight. Almost frost but softer, almost ash but wholer. Made almost of water, which has strictly speaking No feature, but a kind of counter-light, call it insight. Like in woods, when they jostle their hooded shapes, Their heads congealed together, having murdered each other, There are moon-beings, sound-beings, such as deer and half-deer Passing through there, whose eyes can pierce through things. I was like that: visible invisible visible invisible. There's no material as variable as moonlight. I was climbing, clinging to the underneath of my bones, thinking: Good God! Who have I been last night?

The coal-dust hushed parameters of the room. Outside, my mother stitched whole dresses for $3.00 a piece. I slept in a bedroom which faced the street. A cheerleader was killed in a drive-by that year. She died in her sleep. I watched the headlights sweep overhead. * It felt like skin. It did not feel obscene. When that boy tongue-kissed me and wiped his mouth, it was a coming into knowledge. * When my mother whispered, Has anyone touched you there? I had to pick. Alan, I said. I was seven. The training wheels were coming off. Between the couch and wall, the ceiling was white with popcorn bits. The boys stood and watched. I lay there, my eyes open like a doll’s. Someone said,Let me try. He pulled down his pants and rode on top, then abruptly stopped. The boys laughed, said Shhh and stood me up.

I dreamt last night the fright was over, that the dust came, and then water, and women and men, together again, and all was quiet in the dim moon’s light. A paean of such patience— laughing, laughing at me, and the days extend over the earth’s great cover, grass, trees, and flower- ing season, for no clear reason.