Poem: "The Dream Child"

Complete first draft. Decided yesterday to take away the section headings.

The Dream Child

—so what will Baby/be tomorrow?—

            Antonia Pozzi, “The Dreamed Life”

Who speaks to me speaks

to a stir—

in air, a ripple

of veil—perhaps—

speaking

caused the ripple,

hard to tell.

But body is sensed—

joy—as possibility,

everything small

but perfect,

toes,

lips capable

of taking

ravishment—giving.

They walk

the woods as others

make love,

the man who

will be sent away

to Rome,

the girl who will lean

back on grass—

trembling

until the slight wind

drops.

These children

take up so much space.

They tug, they push.

They stride ahead, expecting the world

to give way.

Even when they tumble,

they cover

ground.

I watch behind the elm

and step out—

a shadow.

Only when I open

my throat—

to call, to hiss—

do I

occupy

a place,

as when the sound

of the sea takes up the room

of a shell,

or when sky is skylark.

In their rage,

the dead break

things—soup bowls,

flour mills.

I can see

them, foreheads

burning,

but they can’t

see—the unborn.

They think they are

looking at a loaf

of fire, water

becoming soup.

Whatever else

I am, I am

the earth-clod

on which my parents step

together, her feet

on his feet.

Her fingers weave

between his fingers

like ropes

around a raft.

White wisps—

on a second

look—join

as cloud

and sail off.

I am

left behind.

My young mother, my young corpse,

black album

of images—I stroke:

girl graduate,

political meetings,

Alpine flowers,

gay ribbons.

You have baby

photographs.

I—have—nothing.

You call me

Herald,

but know me

as entombed waters.

The pen dips

in the waters

and writes its

message of love.

To be held

—inside—

your body,

to be fed

by sun

to be cooled

by goodness,

to be born…

to redeem

and be redeemed.

Annunzio—

my mother calls in the dark.

I run

towards the name

of my father’s

dead brother.

I hear her sweet

urgency

but I can’t find her

in the woods.

I run

not with a marguerite

but bayonet.

Because my father loves my mother’s eyes,

I have her blue eyes.

The more he loves, the more blue.

I have her heart

that beats so fast that I am afraid

it will burst.

At night my sex

opens and opens—

impure lips—

to swallow

the moon.

A blessing,

a blessing and—dismissal

of what has already left.

From the interior

of the church—

you see a fountain

shooting up

and toppling,

at a distance too far

to be heard.

The mind has to

provide the music.