Birds of Dream
Dreamed between 1981 & '87 by Kathleen Raine
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Those birds of dream,
Circling high as eagles the skies of sleep, Descending to rest in trees -- I saw with wonder birds of paradise, Rainbow-hued, luminous Their plumage, and others grey as doves. Again into that inner sky they rose, but then Returned once more to await. Are these Birds of soul's country images Of earth, remembered? Peacocks Adorning miniatures of Brindavan, or Persian pages Painted with two squirrel-hairs by craftsmen Skilled in marvels, Are they of inner or of outer skies, Nature's splendour, or memory's? Or are earth's peacocks' jewelled ocelli Mirrors of paradise? Their plumes That make the light shimmer are only dust Of the earth, their lustre in the beholder's eye. Where, of what land are they? Or when did dust and spirit So separate that creatures of clay Ceased to mean heaven, The birds of heaven fly from our waking world away? |
NOTE FOR PURISTS
I renamed this from her generic title The Dream. Even within her own body of work; Raine named at least three poems A Dream or The Dream. And she's not alone; every poet (or prose writer, or painter for that matter) seems to do this--not Cows in Space or Doorknob Orgasm or whatever the dream was--they record the mere fact they remembered a dream at all. Handy for those of us searching the undream world for dreams, but here on a site devoted to dreams...
--Chris Wayan
SOURCE: Collected Poems by Kathleen Raine, 2001, p.300
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