I found this poem riveting from the start, beginning with the image of "occipital light" -- i.e. the visual cortex active in the dream when our eyes 'out here' are closed.
Then to rise up in bed and at once know you're in a dream because of the physical STING OF THE AIR. Dreams have vivid colors, sounds & even smells, but they don't often offer stings of sharp air. Is this, too, like the presences in Fex & Coo, an example of the dream moving out into our world?
And when the dreamer asks "dutifully" what his dream seeks, I was caught by the word "dutifully". It's as if by invoking the god of "Duty" his mind is instantly stung awake to the demands of a daytime conscience.
And I also felt the power of the image of bleeding (red) bits of himself all over the rumpled bed BECAUSE he had been dreaming of poisoned prams & crying Marjorcan bombers!
And finally the strong reminder where the poem declares: "Dreams know the end of everyone but themselves." Indeed, dreams never do seem to end. They last into the future with a life of their own, as Tony says, dreaming their own dreams & sleeping their own sleep -- and never get tired!
Merrilee Beckman
Merrilee…thatnk you for your comment on Tony’s poem. There are some phrases in your comment that I would like to emphasize by asking everyone to imagine into them. THE DREAM MOVING OUT INTO OUR WORLD. This emphasizes the dream’s autoonomy as well as an immplied agenda of its own. DREAMS NEVER SEEM TO END. Can you imagine dreams continuing after our end? DREAMS NEVER GET TIRED. Imagine into dreams dreaming their own dreams!
Merrilee and Russ, your comments have really struck me and what irrupted was that our fears are born out of the night, cut from the same stone as our dreams. But to erase the fears like smallpox, would leave us without nights and dreams,
and our days would have nothing to balance it, no opposite to keep it whole. Then joy too would shrivel up, cease to appear tomorrow morning, tomorrow when we would need it most, for nothing is so frightening or joyful as the new day. And nothing is so needed or demanding as our dreams. Dreams will never tire but will they one day tire of us? Will they tire of our slow evolution? As both Russ and Jung have pointed out, dreams sense our future. We cannot get there without them, but can they get there without us?