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I think one of the
things that poetry

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does is to keep wishes
alive and wishes

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that have no possibility
of ever being fulfilled.

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And I think this poem is
true to that idea called

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"Dream Theory."

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"Not every dream I wake from
leaves me feeling uneasy,

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some are wishes pure and simple
that pass through customs

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unmolested, fitting grandma's
theories of dream as much

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as Freud's.

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My dream last night
about traveling with Lynn

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in Europe seeming to express
a wish for happiness,

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uncompromised by
the clamor of fact,

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the 30 year gap
between the present

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and the era in which I failed to
persuade her I was her destiny,

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was an inch wide
crack for my feelings

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to skip across as they
charge the gangway with all

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our luggage off for a voyage we
never managed to take before.

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All those with degrees
in dream analysis

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are free to turn for the
day to the harder problems

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that social workers and
teachers are up against.

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In my dream, the
reality principle

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showed merely as gray
streaks in her hair

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and a free few wrinkles
that seemed becoming.

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Reality made us linger
so long in Mantua

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over pumpkin pasta
sharing the inside story

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about the Renaissance
that we almost

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missed our train to Verona.

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The only painful
part of the dream

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was leaving her at
a mountain hotel

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when I went to lecture
in Paris on the Bastille

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that poetry opens.

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But soon I returned to find her
standing alone on the terrace,

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her face lit by a
smile that anyone

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skilled at interpreting
smiles would say

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showed how happy she felt
that moment, how lucky.

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And when I woke, I
marveled how lightly

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the weight of history presses
on the sleepers chest as he

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dreams.

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Now that was the muscle
that pumps the blood,

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finds the work a little
harder each year,

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but little seem
changed for whatever

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it is that makes a muscle
pound if a name is mentioned

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or a letter that
fails to arrive is

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imagined waiting among the
magazines and the catalogs.

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So what, if the signature
and the date are missing

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and the paper is so
yellow and wrinkled

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I have to step to the
window to read it.

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That hand, the heart says
stoutly, I know it anywhere."

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