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.]
