When, in sleep, the unlucky few, share everything,
Nothing is theirs. Their waking is like poetry.
Too late for them to say what they really mean.
They shared their agony in pleasurable dreams,
Saying aloud what should not be said aloud.
To the children, this was wrong. The dreams’ authorship
Had no business being anything to them.
As if evangelicals were princes of dreams,
In sleep, things came to light in words.
There was a great noise in those dreams—
A talking congregation of what had migrated before—
What would have to go into the poem as “birds”—
They told them—and by announcing to them—
And deep in sleep, this was naturally unwise—
They loved her! They loved her!—
They heard what they should not have heard,
And their poetry, too, was defeated, too late to revise.
Her name was the poem,
Her name, the confession and the word.