Love Stronger than Death

Agnes Mary Frances Duclaux

I dreamed my Lady and I were dead

And dust was either heart;

Our bodies in one grave were laid,

Our souls went far apart,

Hers with the saints for aye to dwell

And mine to lie and pine in Hell.

But when my Lady looked for me

And found her quest in vain,

For all that blessed company

She knew nothing but pain.

She cried: “How feigned your praising is!

Your God is love, and love I miss.”

The hills whereon her tear-drops fell

Were white with lily-flowers.

They made the burning caves of Hell

As green as Eden-bowers,

Unloosed my tongue, my fetters broke,

“Praised be love,” I cried and woke.

The Fountains at Villa D'Este, Tivoli

Cirilo Bautista

As if he owned the ocean. Here, one man’s dream explodes in water, carved in splashing splendour by lion teeth, angel mouth, breasts of virgins that do not rest. Day and night the liquid sizzles, channelling the dream from terrace to terrace, from stone to stone, till it gathers to a pool that caresses the fish. My brain swims with the fish as they trace their antique silence to a thousand spouts and fountains, then back to the pool again…. One dies again, also, bursting through the skin, and flings his wingless wars to the sun, broken and raining sadness on the soul; but just for a moment, like spumes in air, or the swing of swans to shore, no longer, no better. Bodies bloom and reel in space, juggled and spun by light, by water, to flash a brilliance, no longer, no better. Was this what he thought, he who planned the garden of his mind, to freeze that brilliance? Did he, in despair, command the water to move his mind to each crevice, each pool, each silent sibilance, each flowing, each song of many endings, each murmur, while he slept, as if he owned the ocean?

Family Secret

Nancy Kuhl

Too many cracks precede  the spectacular breaking. Each 

story begins in a different dark- ness. And light: think how it catches

on any surface (pane or  hinge or keyhole) and 

out of night (out of nothing),  all at once: a window, 

a door. It’s a metaphor  (and then it isn’t), darkness. 

When I dream again it’s the old kitchen—I 

open the oven and sound,  like ropes of heat, drifts 

out; a shimmering. Familiar  and confusing. Uncanny,

and then unmistakable: our  voices, recorded. Playback 

and loop, now—every aching  word we whispered here.

Territory

Jonah Mixon-Webster

Where the vision was is when / There are wood panels all over the house shared by many people / and I am a collective member of a white simulation in black face / There is a man with a low fade who is my friend without his dreads / Never a mirage / Never my eye casting out to itself in memory / There is a fight between the races / Water in the tiger’s mouth / A window / Twin slate moons huddle on the horizon / an oceanic circus of grey-light / a lion in a bubble / Now, all is on the surface / In the back, two blonde women sit on the floor while praying to the dead / We think this is the reason why we’re all here / Him, the white man sitting next to my friend without dreads / Unleashes his mouth / A backwards tongue gaped in riddle / In a kind of future-speak / Saying what sounds like: Is us behind us is each a door, is each a phantom, is each a pool, is each is a broken river looking back / Everyone is now frozen like statues and won’t say anything when I shake them / I lift the shades of all eyes / and every time / I see the same child

a poem from Cancionero

Miguel de Unamuno

I dreamed that my dream was ended

and I woke up. It was dark.

There was no moon, no stars,

I was alone in the world.

I turned, looked back behind me

and my faith went down like the sun.

I won it back looking forward,

just believing in a future.

The Bear

Galway Kinnell

1

In late winter

I sometimes glimpse bits of steam

coming up from

some fault in the old snow

and bend close and see it is lung-coloured

and put down my nose

and know

the chilly, enduring odour of bear.

2

I take a wolf’s rib and whittle

it sharp at both ends

and coil it up

and freeze it in blubber and place it out

on the fairway of the bears.

And when it has vanished

I move out on the bear tracks,

roaming in circles

until I come to the first, tentative, dark

splash on the earth.

And I set out

running, following the splashes

of blood wandering over the world.

At the cut, gashed resting places

I stop and rest,

at the crawl-marks

where he lay out on his belly

to overpass some stretch of bauchy ice

I lie out

dragging myself forward with bear-knives in my fists.

3

On the third day I begin to starve,

at nightfall I bend down as I knew I would

at a turd sopped in blood,

and hesitate, and pick it up,

and thrust it in my mouth, and gnash it down,

and rise

and go on running.

4

On the seventh day,

living by now on bear blood alone,

I can see his upturned carcass far out ahead, a scraggled,

steamy hulk,

the heavy fur riffling in the wind.

I come up to him

and stare at the narrow-spaced, petty eyes,

the dismayed

face laid back on the shoulder, the nostrils

flared, catching

perhaps the first taint of me as he

died.

I hack

a ravine in his thigh, and eat and drink,

and tear him down his whole length

and open him and climb in

and close him up after me, against the wind,

and sleep.

5

And dream

of lumbering flatfooted

over the tundra,

stabbed twice from within,

splattering a trail behind me,

splattering it out no matter which way I lurch,

no matter which parabola of bear-transcendence,

which dance of solitude I attempt,

which gravity-clutched leap,

which trudge, which groan.

6

Until one day I totter and fall—

fall on this

stomach that has tried so hard to keep up,

to digest the blood as it leaked in,

to break up

and digest the bone itself: and now the breeze

blows over me, blows off

the hideous belches of ill-digested bear blood

and rotted stomach

and the ordinary, wretched odour of bear,

blows across

my sore, lolled tongue a song

or screech, until I think I must rise up

and dance. And I lie still.

7

I awaken I think. Marshlights

reappear, geese

come trailing again up the flyway.

In her ravine under old snow the dam-bear

lies, licking

lumps of smeared fur

and drizzly eyes into shapes

with her tongue. And one

hairy-soled trudge stuck out before me,

the next groaned out,

the next,

the next,

the rest of my days I spend

wandering: wondering

what, anyway,

was that sticky infusion, that rank flavour of blood, that poetry, by which I lived?

Mine Alone

Marc Chagall

Mine alone Is the country in my soul I enter there without a passport As if it is my home. It sees my sadness And my solitude It lulls me to sleep And covers me with a heavy perfume. 

In me gardens bloom. The flowers are my creations The streets belong to me But there are no houses, They were destroyed in their infancy. The inhabitants roam the air In search of a home; They dwell in my soul.

For this reason I smile When my sun barely shines Or cry Like a light rain In the night.

There was a time when I had two heads. There was a time when these two faces Covered themselves in an amorous dew And dissolved into the perfume of a rose.

At present it seems to me That even when I retreat I press on Toward a lofty portal Behind which stretch out walls Where sleep faint thunder And shattered bolts of lighting.

Mine alone Is the country found in my soul.

A Dream of Life

JB Priestley

A Dreamer once described the pain the pain of life with little gain as earth and sun contrive to give the essence that is ours to live. The dreamer’s dead, but dreams live on long after dreaming souls are gone, and words of wisdom cannot die, unlike the selves of you or I. And what a dream he had to share - That Life! Is living everywhere. Life is the thread and Life the goal. Our Life is  throbbing in the whole. In these poor mortal shells we live a life that only God can give. For God is only passing through the earthly casket that is you. And only when we view the flow of souls that come and souls that go, can we begin to understand How diamonds can be made from sand As many eons make a day the love we give and take away, will make the path on which we see our journey of necessity

Longing

Mengistu Lemma

The train hauled me out of London — out of the smoke, the smog, the grime, the filthy mix of soot and dust — while the train spun fog from the fabric of steam, clothing the land with its garment of blessings and punishment, Yizze kataf, yizze kataf, goes the powerful weaver. Isn’t it amazing? Life’s a miracle: coal smoke set free through the power of coal!

The carriage was big enough for ten, but no one was brave enough to open the door I’d shut fast to keep in the warmth. Instead, they huddled in the corridor, unwilling to share the warmth with a black man — even though coal is black, even though the wealth of England was forged by black coal.

The train whistled like a washint flute; haystacks dotted the distant fields, just like the straw roofs of houses in a village at home. And, in the blink of an eye, I turned into ‘a traveller of God’ in the meadows of England….

‘Greetings to your household’, I cried, I am your “black”, your unexpected, guest: your kindness to me will bring you God’s blessings’. ‘Welcome, come in!’, the head of the household replied. Then his wife brought a bowl of warm water, and kneeling down happily to wash my feet, ‘Don’t be shy, my friend’, she said.

First my mouth blessed that tulla beer of Gojjam, then a bowl arrived, and my empty stomach began to fill as I licked the linseed oil of Gondar from my fingers; next, chicken stew rich with curds. Contented, I yawned. Sleep overcame me as I lay down on fine cotton and was covered with wool….

Dimly, I heard the door slide open — but was fully awake by the time it slammed shut. I jumped, but then calmed myself down, glowering at the reckless young man, the brave one who’d dared to enter my den as I slept. But his spotless shirt and neat matching tie made me laugh: he was so amazingly clean!

It Was a Dream

Olav H Hauge

It was a dream

We all carry with us this dream:

that something wonderful will happen,

that it must happen -

that time will open,

that the heart will open,

that doors will open,

that cliffs will be opened,

that springs will well forth,

that the dream will be opened,

- that we one peaceful morning will glide in -

onto a bay we had not been aware of.

fram da far-haaf

Robert Alan Jamieson

Wake up man! Waken! Listen!

      What? What is it?

Oh what a dream I've had, what a dream! You mustn't put out to sea today! A voice was crying out to me "This is the storm, This is the first fierce cloud to gather" Look to the west'ard!

A raincloud over the headland, a mist!

What a dream! Foolish heart to fly in the face of omen. The boat they found last Thursday,

 A freak!

Upturned, When the sea had been silent for days. O, the dream I've had.