Peter Porter
Bad Dreams In Venice
Again I found you in my sleep
And you were sturdily intact,
The counsel you would always keep
Became my dream’s accusing tract.
Still I dared not think your force
Might even slightly slack my guilt -
This wasn’t judgment but a course
Which self not knowing itself built.
It scarcely mattered where I dreamed,
The dead can choose a rendezvous:
You knew that nothing is redeemed
By blame, yet let me conjure you.
For this was Venice where we’d walked
Full tourist fig, first man and wife
On earth, and where we’d looked and talked
You could unravel your knit life.
And now Venetian vapours clung
To every cold and wounding word -
The spectres which I moved among
Came from the phrases I had stirred.
They could not harm you but they bit
Into whatever had not died.
However we might reason it,
Your fate and mine marched side by side.
And those old harshnesses which you
Muttered to me unrestrained,
Like Venice, loved but hated too,
Were all the closeness which remained.
Page(s) 22
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