This one is called "My Dream by Henry James."
I really had a dream that was by Henry James.
[LAUGHTER]
And this was it.
There is a quotation in the poem.
This is the only thing.
James said that in his notebooks that living in the work--
this is the only thing.
Which I happen not to agree with at all.
Though there is too much truth in it for it to be dismissed.
There is also--
Concerti is, of course, the plural of concerto
and ephemerae is the plural of ephemera,
a short lived phenomenon.
And it's pronounced ephemerae.
"My Dream by Henry James."
"In my dream by Henry James, there is a sentence--
stay and comfort your sea companion for a while.
Spoken by an aging man to a young one as they
dawdle on the terrace of a beachfront hotel.
The young man doesn't know how to feel,
which is often the problem in James, which
may have been the problem with James,
living as he said in the work, this
is the only thing, shaping his late concerti
of almost inaudible ephemerae on the emotional scale.
By 1980, when this dream came to me,
the line spoken takes on sexual overtones.
Especially as the aging man says it,
he earnestly presses the young man's forearm.
And in James, no exchange between people is simple.
But the young man turns without answering
to gaze over the balustrade at the ocean,
over the pastel textures of beach umbrellas
and scalloped dresses whose hems brushed
the sand, without guessing the aging man's
loneliness and desire for him.
He sees only monotony as he watches waves coming in.
And this odd old man who shared his parents' table on the ship
seems the merest disturbance of the air
as by a mayfly at such distance he does not quite hear.
Why should I talk to anyone--
glides over his mind like a cloud
above a pond that mirrors what passes over
and does not remember.
But I remember the cloud and pond
from a midweek picnic with my mother
when I was still too little for school.
And we were alone together near the pond,
darkened by shadows of pines.
When suddenly, with both hands, she
turned my face toward the cloud captured in the water.
And everything I felt in the world was love for her."