The Sweetest Dream

See http://simorghpress.blogspot.com/  for my new blog, which will include all poems and projects as I go, and, eventually, another link to one that I will get to, a publishable form of my annotated Waste Land, already fully revised and refreshed since you saw it last.  The goal (the dream?) is to have that really published before 2022, the 100th anniversary of Eliot's piece de resistance.

The Sweetest Dream

We are such stuff...
Whan that Aprill...
Winter kept us warm...

A poem in honor of the first seven lines of T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land

When we should sleep, perchance to dream of rest,
We wake up in the middle of a dream,
And, face to face with all our restlessness,

We realize: the more we dream the less
We sleep.  Yet in our deepest sleep we seem
To seek the sweetest dream: forgetfulness.

To let the mountain memories of yes-
terday, the pushing pulling of the stream,
The ocean of tomorrow's wantonness

Be all forgotten: sleep without the stress
Of time and place or meaningfulness, dream
Beyond the tests of schedule or address

Or past interpretations, dream the dream
Of peace and find the stream that lets you rest.

     The sweetest dreams we don't remember.
     In deepest winter we sleep the best.

A winter sleep is warm and long and safe inside.  The doors are shut, the blinds are drawn and we are undercover and immortal, but

     The sweetest dreams we don't remember.
     In deepest winter we sleep the best.

The sweetest dreams are moments of their own reality, unshaped by all that they are running from, untroubled by the great escape.

     The sweetest dreams we don't remember.
     In deepest winter we sleep the best.

But winter turns to spring, tomorrow misremembers yesterday, the morning breaks with business and all the sweetness melts away.