the dream

I stole away last night. It is doubtless that you did not see it. I took a torch from my mind (its bearer) and wandered wilting down the lost and golden passageways; there was nothing in my mind – there was the world riding on a wind-breeze when I stepped out past the columns of hardened, frozen sediment.

I robbed the gems from the palace ivy and took them all away. There was a trap-door in my heart and I pulled a string and went down. There was a darkness wavering with a monster’s ligaments as I went down to cliff’s-edge and flew. I fell right through the sea.

There was a ship in my soul and it had fine transparent sails. I took them all and made myself a gown. On the gangplank I danced in the arms of a sailor as invisible as the jutting rocks. The ship flew itself right into one and we all went tumbling.

I fell translucently right through the air. I took the feathers that fell around me and made from them a key, and I locked my heart up deep in a well-spring somewhere, far away.