I return to you in dreams!
Let me lean near you, and inform you of dreams.
A dream is more than a dream seems.
Do not insult dreams—especially dreams of you!
Do poets presume poems and dreams untrue?
Poems are false, I know they are, but not dreams, not dreams of you.
Dreams! Dreams are real, and you exist again in dreams, found
By my life, as you existed, passive but profound.
The dreams remember the years,
The years when nights and promises were true.
Returning is what dreams prefer to do—
Take my hand! Look! Dreamland!
This is how I return, in my mind’s softest robe, to you.
And you return in winding silence too,
Past openings where the smoke
Hangs heavily where paths have made
Entrances down the entrances to shade,
Darkness offering secret, trembling memories of light
Where you spoke to me by trees one summer night.
In the dream I see you there:
Proud, beautiful face!
On either side of your face, the perfumed hair,
Your eyes loving me and mocking me as much as mockery might dare
In the smile which melts into the mist of your race,
The proud chin, the nostrils of an ancient shape,
Which puts me in mind of all
That might take place in a palace banquet hall
By the feast, seated, arms of the lemon, lyre and grape,
Drapery with patterns of circles, strange patterns of the heart
Where you, by fire-light, later undress and recline,
Letting me know, with one look, your entire mind.
These dreams are returning, my morning soon to be my night;
The languid half-falling music of dreams,
Dreams, dreams, dreams, setting right
The wrongs, the inevitable sorrow
Which marches forward in a cold tomorrow.
