Blague

after Ezra Pound

 

A day never goes by without this question––

were my dreams too small?

Are people executed daily because of me?

Because I haven’t dreamt enough do bakers decorate

ordinary pink birthday cakes with yellow swastikas?

Are my dreams only passwords to moods of emotional ruin?

Do they cause people to drown crossing rivers on horseback?

Have lovers died in pathological Odditoriums,

believing they were freaks?

Is one checker-socked man wheezing sick in empty bus depot?

Are there no minefields to de-activate before I sleep?

Mothers remove their teeth at old sinks––

do they dream too small?

Did I expose ignorance, inaccessibility, in places

where there should be the reverse?

Did I dream too small

& not pass on what most I cherished?

 

 

4 December 1988

 

 

[Published in Grasslands.

© 1994 by Jim Cohn.] 

 

 

 

APPEARS IN

Grasslands
(Writers & Books Publications, 1994)

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