Dream 22: Sitting On a Nest of Swans

1. The Swans

I was afraid I had hurt something.

Maybe even killed it.

When I sat down, something struggled hard against me.

So I stepped back to watch the floral pattern shimmer,

Then, the cushion lift like a lid from a boxed gift. Beneath me,

The two swans were sleeping, graceful

As an urn. The long handles of their throats

Curved into each other, warm and incubated

Against the snowy-white.

Near the shepherd’s staff of their necks,

Were the rose-tinged feathers

Charged with bright blood.

The glow of a sunset disappearing into

The disorder of a dark forest.

Softly, I tried to waken them.

Their mouths opened and wagged with black tongues.

The swans spat at me. The nest hissed.

2. The Black Pond

As the seduction of water finally took leave

Of its senses, a burning eye

Set fire to the woods, roused

The elegiac stomach of the pond

Into heaving until its vapors spiraled upward

To expire inside the skein of a cloud.

In the dream, I am walking. There is the black pond

And nothing else. There is the black pond, the swans

And nothing else. There is the black pond, the exhalation

Of stars, the swans and nothing else. There are the swans,

Their reed voices fencing in the woods, there is the pond,

A littering of stars and nothing else. Truly this is the way,

Drifting into blackness, listening to the low

Rustle of swans across the clearing, the slow

Unfolding of their wings like paper wrappings,

Revealing themselves as flushed bodies

Which never touch the surface, the swans never waking

To the gold leprosy of starlight on the water

Its fathoms wrestling them down

As the only way out.

3. The Sleeper

Something flies from my body.

Outside in the clearing, angels wrestle

Slabs of granite. Their feathers are the black of magpie

Wings. From their temples pours the irreversible

Light. It is the way water leaves, recovers itself, moves on

As if nothing went wrong.

The angels walk among the darkened headstones,

Their figures thick with a fullness of light

They wear like armor. Beneath the long ripple

Of skins, bodies go to gases in the ground.

And still they work, lugging the burden

Of crouched lambs, crosses, polishing

The plain upturned faces of the dead.

I am a lamp at the window. The moon

In a white sling glides behind the closed

Shutter of clouds. Now angels rest

Beyond the black periphery of the pond.

Some light in trees and wear velvet slippers.

Others laugh, choke, smoke

Opium cigarettes. Their fingers are a blur

Of hummingbirds.

There is one I recognize. His alabaster shoulders

Smoothed by feathers, snakes of tangled

Hair, dark eyes lit by tapers. The way

He looks at me stirs my face

Into many disguises.

The angel draws close with breath

Of lilacs and icy air against my brow.

As he presses my lips through the glass

I fear I must surrender to gladness.

If I grant your wish, you must never tell,

The angel whispers in a man’s voice

And takes back his smoking hand.