76 Dreams poems

I Out of scarcity,—

I know 'tis but a Dream, yet feel more anguish Than if 'twere Truth. It has been often so: Must I die under it? Is no one near? Will no one hear these stifled groans and wake me?

Deep reaches of sleep until the unforeseen moment, like fugue, like petit mal, some kind of sign, a touch from a joker’s finger, to let him know what’s right, what’s wrong with the dream-within-a-dream. A sudden, slight shift in the order of things and all the past undone. He left what was left of himself in her care that night. • They went to the river and dropped their clothes on the bank. She struck out. He followed in the long, slow vee of her wake. She could sound and surface, bringing back with her what other lovers had dumped: hotel bill, gimcrack ring, a four-square shot from the photo booth. Later, they dipped their bottles and drank. She looked at him and laughed. “You think you’re safe? You’re not.” • In this, her fool is deaf and dumb and twirling a pink parasol. In this he’s doing a chicken dance. He turns away and puckers up for a kiss. He’s their stalker, familiar, spy, his slippy grin is all lipstick and green teeth. Words to the wise, or coffin-laugh, or catcall. In this, he watches from cover, maestro of the deadfall. He goose-steps them out of the tunnel of love and into the house of glass.

I woke. You were lying beside me in the double bed, prone, your long dark hair fanned out over the downy pillow. I’d been dreaming we stood on a beach an ocean away watching the waves purl into their troughs and tumble over. Knit one, purl two, you said. Something in your voice made me think of women knitting by the guillotine. Your eyes met mine. The fetch of a wave is the distance it travels, you said, from where it is born at sea to where it founders to shore. I must go back to where it all began. You waded in thigh-deep, waist-deep, breast-deep, head-deep, until you disappeared. I lay there and thought how glad I was to find you again. You stirred in the bed and moaned something. I heard a footfall on the landing, the rasp of a man’s cough. He put his head around the door. He had my face. I woke. You were not there.

At the midnight in the silence of the sleep-time, When you set your fancies free, Will they pass to where—by death, fools think, imprisoned— Low he lies who once so loved you, whom you loved so, —Pity me? Oh to love so, be so loved, yet so mistaken! What had I on earth to do With the slothful, with the mawkish, the unmanly? Like the aimless, helpless, hopeless, did I drivel —Being—who? One who never turned his back but marched breast forward, Never doubted clouds would break, Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph, Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, Sleep to wake. No, at noonday in the bustle of man's work-time Greet the unseen with a cheer! Bid him forward, breast and back as either should be, "Strive and thrive!" cry "Speed,—fight on, fare ever There as here!"

The message I found on the Post-it note went thus: love truth; expect to be found out. Kid-style capitals proved I wrote it, but left no clue why I'd swelled into a fat clause no editor could edit; then, an entry on a shrink's list of patient slang for sex— her desk Norwegian teak, the mug of tea on which she had affixed her Post-it notes hot against her knuckle, their lips of stickum loosening . . . And yet, I knew the note to peel away at hour's end would terminate our sessions—cool as the draft her linen skirt was lifting to: Love, just stay benighted, given everything I know you've got to hide.

Close to the door in my dream the small signs I saw a brown sign with wisdom on it I saw a brown one leaning with wisdom on it fringe of a mirror my mother leaning over a pond cupping water leaning against the moulding cardboard or wood which materials do you does your wisdom prefer which a- partment in a summer with someone I felt brave to have touched her love the screen door and the dogs and the cats always getting out. That was the fear two signs fading but recalling they had faded like words fade in stone because of the rain and the days and waking and the dream is leaving with every step leaning over the meat because I do not want you to have died in vain kissing the turkey and the neck of  my dog all animals am I. all dreams, all stone all message am I.

the car had a cover over it and it was over the wheels and it hurt my ass and I couldn’t sleep. It seems I should move, go forward now I was wandering through the jungle anywhere on earth but I was a woman in bed in New York and how many people have died in wild places dreaming you were still in bed would you know. Travel well I said to my dog when she went on her journey thinking of a cheap movie I’ve thought this was an urn turning this was on water this was flat but now I see light between the trees I see water trickling through stone this is not made of   language but energy that will stop when I die the dream dies too one bolt

In visions of the dark night I have dreamed of joy departed— But a waking dream of life and light Hath left me broken-hearted. Ah! what is not a dream by day To him whose eyes are cast On things around him with a ray Turned back upon the past? That holy dream—that holy dream, While all the world were chiding, Hath cheered me as a lovely beam A lonely spirit guiding. What though that light, thro' storm and night, So trembled from afar— What could there be more purely bright In Truth's day-star?

Where sunless rivers weep Their waves into the deep, She sleeps a charmed sleep: Awake her not. Led by a single star, She came from very far To seek where shadows are Her pleasant lot. She left the rosy morn, She left the fields of corn, For twilight cold and lorn And water springs. Through sleep, as through a veil, She sees the sky look pale, And hears the nightingale That sadly sings. Rest, rest, a perfect rest Shed over brow and breast; Her face is toward the west, The purple land. She cannot see the grain Ripening on hill and plain; She cannot feel the rain Upon her hand. Rest, rest, for evermore Upon a mossy shore; Rest, rest at the heart's core Till time shall cease: Sleep that no pain shall wake; Night that no morn shall break Till joy shall overtake Her perfect peace.