The Cold Man's Second Dream
This dream builds a basement in a castle,
Where all the prophets ramble
Corridors unwinding, where they all can amble.
They gather round a hearth, and listen
to this story from the mantle:
"For uncounted generations now, I have been a stone
Light enough for a strong man to hold in his hand.
And one day I was built into this castle hearth.
The man who held me only for a moment,
who blinked his lovely eyes but once
before he placed me...
Where has he run? What sands have touched his toes?
How many generations has it been
Since his blood froze?
"These stones to my left and to my right, and the two that touch me from above, and the two that touch me from below, and still four more that I can feel behind me, have grown so close over three and a half hundred years that they have become more than a family to me. And we've become a single entity.
"But these ten stones surrounding me, neither can they speak nor feel, and their warmth comes only from the fire, it isn't real. They are like so much blood congealed."
And all the prophets, young and old
Heard the story that he told
One prophetess had long yellow locks
And carried her heart in a jewel-laden box
The love of her youth danced beside her
Rhythmic like a wall of tumbling rocks
With an elyptical split from which vital waters streamed
[This is the second dream the cold man dreamed.]
Another prophet, and a favored one of mine,
Stays poised upon a pile of pillows--
Olive green, gold, plum and majenta colored pillows--
Leafing through pages of prayer
And golden ringlets light the shadows in his hair
And wordless melodies enchant his eyes
And when he smiles he sets the sun to rise
His voice is heaven in a prison cell
So that every time he speaks an angel cries.
And these two prophets over here
Play ping pong with a little galaxy
Their paddles are the ends of time lines,
Sending the galaxy bouncing back and forth
From end to end.
The stone becomes impatient
Through the mortar to his right and to his left
Emerget the tips of fingers, and whole hands
reaching through, and as they do,
the stones around this stone begin to tremble
as his arms burst through
And the whole wall cracks
And the young, yellow-haired prophetess
lets a pink-tongued scream from her purple lips,
and the black paint jumps from her eyes
becoming its own mind.
The walls are crumbling as the world-weary, griot stone
grows arms and frees his bricky body from the wall
And the black paint forms an inky net and saves them all.
The avalanche envelops all.
Trekking above, we cannot look within.
Searching from below, into the black inky net
that once was paint upon the prophet's eyes,
we glimpse eternity.
In this moment, the net begins to expand.
It has kept expanding and all the fumes from its ink
has sent us all to sleep.
He wakes, believing the tumbling rocks are within him,
But it is the voice of hunger in his soul
All he hate this morning was a coin of coal.
The song bird has long left and the woods are deep,
and all the trees have long since gone to sleep.
And all the prophets from his dream
Are sleeping in a heap
In a shut-locked closet in his unconscious.
Just one of the tiny coins of memory he carries.
