within each dream is another, remote And mocking

If dreams could dream, beyond the canon of landscapes 

Already saved from decorum, including mute 

Illicit girls cowering under eaves 

Where the books are stacked and which they 

Pillage, hoping to find not events but response 

 

If dreams could dream, free from the damp crypt 

And from the bridge where she went 

To watch the spill and the tree 

Standing on its head, huge and rootless 

(Of which the wasp is a cruel illustration 

Although its sting is not), the decay 

Now spread into the gardens, their beds 

Tethered to weeds and to all other intrusions; 

Then the perishing house, lost from view 

So she must, and you, look out to see 

Not it but an image of it, would be 

Nowhere and would not resemble, but would languish 

On the other side of place where the winged boy 

Touches her ear far from anywhere 

But gathered like evening around her waist 

So that within each dream is another, remote 

And mocking and a version of his mouth on her mouth. 

[Ann Lauterbach {1942- } “Psyche’s Dream”, from Best American Poetry 1988]