from Dreaming at Noon: Dreamed Poem; Following; Impossible Wish

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Dreamed Poem


The dream calls each night like lethal seawater
Calls to the mouth of someone who has been
Out to sea without water for days

Death calls like the body of one who dances
Before a traveler who for years has not seen another body

…Each individual is alone, each seeks oblivion

Every being is a traveler that yearns
For a sense of understanding in an unholy city
Wherein nobody speaks the same language

Every infant was exiled at birth and sleeps to return to its origin,
In the end each will perish and drink from the same source
Until oblivion calls for its new life to begin.



Following


In the city, I saw someone I thought
I knew.
Maybe I did know them. From behind
I thought it might be they.
I followed them for many blocks,
Never quite catching up.
It seemed the faster I walked,
The faster they would walk in turn.

I kept on, neither becoming surer
Nor less sure this person was the one I thought I knew.
For days and nights
I kept on,
Following them to the edge of the city,
Through the countryside and finally to the sea.
Yes, I even crossed the sea in pursuit of this one
Who may not have been the one I had known

Whose ambiguity I was now used to—
I began to feel affection toward this person
Whose back I had become so familiar with.
If they were to turn around,
Confirming or disconfirming my suspicion,
I think I might have dropped dead, having grown
So used to their ambiguity,
Which had become a sort of dear friend to me.



Impossible Wish


I think I prefer it infinitely to be out west. For here the sun sets into the mouth of the sea. And the steam made by this meeting makes the clouds, which soar high up overhead.

And when the sky is full of them, clouds, they burst…until the sea is filled again with water… Then, as the moon rises, its light swirls the darkness and the sea around—it fills me with joy to watch and understand.

Yet… as the sun rises out of the sea, it means that we’re back in the east. And I know that this is the matter with the west, and I have a sudden need to be in the east at the same time as the west, which is not possible.








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