846-850: Dead Dreams
i
How well they dream, who publish dreams to us!
How fair we fare upon their images!
How beautiful their dreamspun image is!
How beautiful, we, when we copy thus!
Thus said the Living, living in the town
that lay between the Dreamers and the World,
who took the Dreamers’ dreams and made unfurled
their images to those of less renown.
When on a jaunt did one so Living take,
when questions had he on the dream he bore,
when something in it made not mirth, but bore,
when mirth was what the dream was made to make.
And when the Living saw what Dreamers were,
the World made much more sense to him after.
ii
It was a dream that had less than was wont.
The Living looked it over once again—
it was less vibrant than most dreams had been—
it was not what the World was known to want.
It was just this the Living were to make
of dreams the Dreamers gave for them to give,
to those out in the World who try to live
with all the world around them all at stake.
If Living people told the dream just right,
they might make people in the World live on,
and people in the World would get along,
and Dreamers could dream on another night.
But this dream didn’t seem to be in touch.
Something was off—just some, or maybe much.
iii
And out there, there out in the World, they live,
without a care, but living on the dreams
that are so often bursting from their seams,
that promises of hope and venture give.
The Living (like the Living on this trip)
would often revel in the living World,
would live in joy with what the World unfurled
from out the dreams the Living would so ship.
The World made real the dreams the Living brought,
and all revered the Dreamers for their craft,
which now this Living one was off to draft,
who sought a solvent for the thought he’d caught.
And now he graced the Dreamer’s city, where
there was something nightmarish in the air.
iv
No man walked any street, no street had feet
of any kind, nor any kind of life.
It was unduly ridden, all, of strife,
though strife indeed was every measure meet.
The Living paced through every alleyway,
beneath each lamp and every sign went he,
beneath an empty air went eerily
the Living man upon that sunny day.
And he dared not yet walk inside of doors,
which might well hold the secret that was mute,
which might the Dreamers inside doors refute,
which might make merry this nightmarish course.
But finally, when every street was wrung,
he pushed an open door from where it hung.
v
And when that Living walked in Dreamer’s doors,
and saw the empty kitchens and front rooms,
and saw the empty parlors and bathrooms,
he went to bedrooms on the upper floors,
and saw there, in their beds, the Dreamers—slack,
whose heads were on their pillows, pleasant-faced,
whose dreams had last their waking visage, graced,
but who now dreamed and never would come back.
And all too oft the dreams—he now looked back,
who Lived there in between here and the World,
who had so often translated, unfurled
the dreams—had always had a hint of lack!
“I dream, I dream to say that these are dead—
who never have been living, but in bed.”