Dream (Blue)

"I must have been asleep when you went out
One luminous night, when stars all about
Shone plaintive in the silent evening air -
I see it in my mind like I was there.

It's just like you to pick the perfect scene:
The lighting was just right, the moon serene
And slightly mournful, distant, cold and bare -
I see it in my mind like I was there.

Your gown floating ethereal like some
Dream of a scene a painter had once come
Upon while reading Shakespeare, icy fair -
I see it in my mind like I was there.

Now it's a ritual, now it's a cry,
Now life-affirming leap into the sky's
Reflection, now a whimper of despair -
I see it in my mind like I was there.

And down, down, through the misty mirror, down
To where the reeds ensnared a loving crown
That held you from me, gently stroked your hair -
I see it in my mind like I was there.

It's far too cold for you, your skin is pale
And far too cold, your eyes a glassy veil -
They sparkled stream-blue when you used to care;
I see it in my mind like I was there.

Your tragic tableau haunts me like a scream.
You spread your arms wide, waking from a dream
You felt some fondess for, but couldn't bear -
I see it in my mind like I was there."

Background

This is the first poem I wrote in the Dream cycle thing I'm doing. I wrote it just before going away to uni in a bid to have something to read at a poetry group.

Note the whole thing being in quotation marks - it's because it's a character talking. I picture him as an obsessed literary critic and probably amateur dramatist. He might be the same person as in Red Dream, I don't know.

Technically

This is me working up to a villanelle, pretty much. Also, it's really not my normal voice - for one thing, in my accent air/there don't rhyme (though to be honest I don't usually write fear/there etc. unless I'm making a point, because no-one would understand me). It and Red Dream are probably my favourite things I've done. There might be another Dream to round them off, I haven't decided if I'm going to share it.

I wrote it at around four in the morning (like almost everything) and ended up with four or five too many stanzas, which I duly replaced or removed. The joys of an open form, eh... I like the way that this seven-stanza version centres on the fourth stanza, which is really the pivot the whole thing rests on. 

(They weren't very good, if you're wondering. I don't know, I would be. There was a bit about her counting steps in her head before she gets to the bank, which it was a shame to lose, but ruthless editing is often necessary.)

Links

Hmm... I picture the scene the lover is recreating as rather Ophelia-like (a rather large JPEG of the Millais painting, which is of course much too green for the poem, but you know), as befits the dramatic thing.

Talking of ruthless editing, and hoping to avoid a thunderbolt from the literary gods for even implying a comparison, T. S. Eliot's original version of The Waste Land was much longer, and it was only with his editor Ezra Pound's advice that he cut it down - it's dedicated to him with il miglior fabbro (the better craftsman - a Dante reference) underneath. The link is to an online version of the text with Eliot's questionably helpful notes as well.