The Sublime

For Larry Levis

(reprinted by permission of Louisiana State University Press)

And what good is a dream finally? It breaks your head open

and cello music pours out of a stranger's window and the most

gorgeous woman you ever loved says to hit the road and you do

see them—that stranger and this woman. Kissing everywhere.

In the trees. On boats. In the kitchen cupboards. The fog

of daily life never lifts and the checkbook needs proper

calculations and the dog would like supper please and now

without warning the dream returns. It breaks your head open.

You lie there for a week and no one finds you until the dog

having lost its dignity finally eats and when there is no more

howls. It howls. And you are a missing person, a passage

of shit quivered into the dirt. A good boy. A terrible dream

someone picks up with a plastic bag wrapped in his hand

to throw away and you are thrown away. You do it every day.

Walking too early, driving to work, working and returning.

Reading poems of great beauty and crying at the movies.

Touching the hair of your niece who laughs at water. Flying

over cornfields so close and so openly that when you wake

there is silk in your beard. Your arms are tired and hang

at your sides like the wings of a migratory bird who is about

to die. And what good is a dream finally? It breaks your heart

and you stand in the lush dark of the moment after twilight

ends and begin to sing and nothing makes sense to you

and you sing louder for a while, then awkwardly sit down

where you are. And the stars overhead shine a little—no more

or less than usual—and whether it is daylight and they are invisible

or whether it is night and they are the embers of a blacksmith's

fire, they shine and you are grateful. That love is like a hammer.