I can’t help but be reminded of the last scene of Orwell’s Animal Farm, where the pigs and the
humans are at a poker table together, fighting because two players had both
laid down an ace of spades. The rest of the barnyard is watching through the
window: “The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and
from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”
In this crazy dream of a poem, the monsters have taken over the city, become
high-bred and comfy imposters, but they’re running the show now, as corrupt and
luxurious as the previous group they kicked out. Plus ça change…
The final stanza is a mad encapsulation of some of The Dream Songs’ recurring motifs: Was this
all due to a failure of love? (Answer: Of course it was! You failed in your
love. What else did you expect?) Then: “You is a swirl / of ending dust, Your
Majesty…” Then, reduced to begging on the street. Your Begging Majesty is a
terribly clever image that captures the unwhole state of the ego that sees
itself as royal but also can’t deny the obvious disintegration of the person it’s
part of. The two superimposed extremes with no whole middle. A take on Eliot’s “mixing
memory with desire.” Looking backwards and forwards, but no focus on the
moment, the now. B.’s image is either terribly clever, or if it’s really from a
dream, which seems perfectly likely, then it’s the poet’s subconscious mind
thumping him on the forehead. This is
what is. What are you going to do
about it?
Nothing. Too late. But there is the ignominious necessity of
begging, before the “swirl of ending dust” finally ends once and for all.
It’s past time for these Dream Songs to be over, and they
almost are. But man, what a crazy, apt, and sickly-tragic-hilarious take on the
whole arc of the poem this portion of it is. When I was in grad school working
on the MFA, I went through a short-lived phase where I was concerned that maybe
I wasn’t creative enough to be the
writer I wanted to be. A dream put that to rest. It was set in a kind of
outdoor art show, and I walked through booth after booth, looking at the
profusion of paintings, of all different palettes and styles, sculptures,
stained glass, mobiles, wood turnings, and when I woke up, the realization was instantly
there that this was a message from some hidden level: I (you) (actually: WE) created every one of those art works you
just saw in that dream. Get over the “I’m not creative enough” horseshit. Your
life is an avalanche of stimulus. Open to the miraculous abundance, of your
world, your mind. The dream-mind works with the materials the waker’s life
hands it, and its inventiveness can have such a strange, wicked directness. Its
inventiveness is inexhaustible.
What a great dream!
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