At bottom of a dream are dreams. Each night
I want to lose myself in the dark water
washing me from the day, yet throbbing under
pure waters is an obscene wondrous light
with its gray hour of the coming Void.
Maybe it is a mirror with my strange face
or great jail in a labyrinth. The space
my be a garden—always one destroyed.
A nightmare. An unworldly horror. Something
unnamed stabs me from yesterdays of myth
and mist; the hated image burns the pith
of the eye cursing darkness, wakening.
Why when my soul’s alone and limbs repose
is there—bursting in me—this insane rose?
Translated by Willis Barnstone