We move into December’s dreamtime. What are the dreams (or nightmares) you are having? Are they sleeping dreams or waking dreams? Even as research shows how essential quality sleep is to health, I’ve been struggling to drop into the unconscious space of dreams these past weeks for fear I won’t reemerge. The boundary between asleep and awake seems fuzzy right now.
Recently, someone asked: in the face of dreamtime, how do you sustain yourself erotically? Tossed to the ground by nightmares they I can’t leave behind, how do I help myself arise?
This month, I’m experimenting with poetry as a source of sustenance. I offer you “Dreams” by Günter Eich (thanks poetryfoundation.org). Does this bring you comfort in any way? What poems sustain you?
—Amy
Dreams
by Günter Eich
Wake up, your dreams are bad!
Stay awake, the nightmarishness is coming ever nearer.
To you too it is coming, though you live far from
the places of bloodshed,
even to you and your sacrosanct
afternoon nap.
If not today, then tomorrow,
but it will certainly come.
“Oh, pleasant sleep
on the cushions embroidered with red flowers,
Anita’s Christmas present to you, she sat over the stitching for
all of three weeks,
oh, pleasant sleep,
following the juicy roast and the sprouts boiled to pulp.
As you drift off you think of yesterday’s
Fox evening news:
frolicsome Easter lambs, the stirrings of nature, the opening of the new
casino in Baden-Baden,
with their new Australian coach, the Light Blues pip the Dark Blues
by two and a half lengths
in the Varsity Race—
more than enough there to occupy the brain.
Oh the soft cushion, the first class goose down!
Lying on it, you forget the irritations of the world, this
item for instance:
the doctor accused of procuring an abortion said in his
defense:
the woman had seven children already, and she came to me with
her youngest
swaddled in newspaper
because she was unable to afford diapers.
Well, these are the court’s affairs, not ours.
There’s nothing to be done if a has a cushier time of it than b,
and, whatever happens, our grandchildren can sort it out.”
“Ah, asleep already? A pleasant waking then, friend!
The current is already live in the wire kraal, and the
sentries have been posted.”
No, don’t sleep while the arrangers of the world are busy!
Be suspicious of the power they claim
to have to acquire on your behalf!
Stay awake to be sure that your hearts are not empty, when
others calculate on the emptiness of your hearts!
Do what is unhelpful, sing songs from out of your mouths
that go against expectation!
Be ornery, be as sand, not oil in the thirsty machinery
of the world!
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