This is a poem that is keyed by two dreams.
I think they'll be self-evident.
You should know that the first language in the poem
is dream language.
"A Few Nights and Days."
"He foresaw a lagoon cut off from its larger body,
capillaries floating like plankton
in a cadaver, a man with his arms
joyously around men and women.
When he woke, it was a Tuesday, the porch lights still on
and umbrage in the air over breakfast.
The woman he loved had her eyes closed, looking
for holes in his arguments.
He muffed his mouth, hating her, wondering
if she knew she'd be dead in 30 or 40 years,
hating himself from the stone wall
he could build in seconds around his heart,
hating the nation talk, the journalism between people
who simply wanted touch.
His daughter came in with the alphabet in her mouth.
How, out of love, he squeezed her until she was breathless.
How, if she were Vietnamese and on the run, beyond hunger,
scabbed, whimpering, he might, out of love,
squeeze her until she was dead.
And then it was Wednesday and Thursday,
and every morning the porch light a dull beacon in the sun.
He dreamed the last suck of a falling
star, that intake of air before one begins to dazzle the world,
and the regular breath of people everywhere contemplating
insurance.
And he woke and found himself on the edge of nothing
in particular in the middle of a bed
big enough for three victims of the 6 o'clock news.
He made love to his wife, whispering,
this is how you steal moments from the end of your life.
And they knocked the clock off the night table, the covers
onto the floor, and the orphans took their big eyes elsewhere,
but only for a while.
The 20th century was relentless.
There were satellites near the moon reporting everything,
children wanting to know why squirrels didn't look
both ways before cars hit them, the ordinary desolation
of handshakes and lunches.
Not even sex or his natural capacity for self-deception
did much good anymore.
On the last day of the week in a year,
in a lifetime of last days, he left
his house daydreaming his shadow had shed its dark clothes.
The streets were crowded.
He saw the flesh of beautiful women, all flesh as flesh
that is dying.
But he said to himself, every touch is a renewal,
and he touched no one."