The Dream That Must Be Interpreted
Only a sleeper considers it real.
Then death comes like dawn,
at what you thought was your grief.
But there's a difference with this dream.
Everything cruel and unconscious
done in the illusion of the present world,
all that does not fade away at the death-waking.
and it must be interpreted.
all the quick, sexual wanting,
those torn coats of Joseph,
they change into powerful wolves
The retaliation that sometimes comes now,
to what the other will be.
You know about circumcision here.
It's full castration there!
And this groggy time we live,
A man goes to sleep in the town
where he has always lived, and he dreams he's living
In the dream, he doesn't remember
the town he's sleeping in his bed in. He believes
the reality of the dream town.
The world is that kind of sleep.
The dust of many crumbled cities
settles over us like a forgetful doze,
but we are older than those cities.
We emerged into plant life
and into the animal state, and then into being human,
and always we have forgotten our former states,
except in early spring when we slightly recall
That's how a young person turns
toward a teacher. That's how a baby leans
toward the breast, without knowing the secret
of its desire, yet turning instinctively.
Humankind is being led along an evolving course,
through this migration of intelligences,
and though we seem to be sleeping,
there is an inner wakefulness
and that will eventually startle us back
to the truth of who we are.