Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

I awaken this morning suffused by an immense sadness encompassing everything. “Saudade” is the Portuguese word for it. “Hiraeth” in Welsh. In the dream, there was a feeling I had not, in my 60 years, dreamed before, and on the occasions when felt in waking life was fleeting, so even when strongly felt, I knew it could not last, that it had to pass. On some level it was a dream of Anabela (but perhaps that is because she is Spanish-speaking though Portuguese). The dream took place in a Hispanic neighborhood of Philadelphia. In the dream I feel my life’s still unfolding possibilities over time. Perhaps it was a dream of Nechama’s niece, or Veronica, or one of my Hispanic students at Temple University when I was working there over twenty years ago. Ah, it could have been anyone. Caressa even. It began in the old house on “B” Street I grew up in. The house was a shell. The Palestinian family next door was there as they were when I sold the house a decade ago. They were good neighbors. My mother was still alive In the dream, saying she hoped the place didn’t fall down. My oldest friend, Len Kaplan, appeared in the dream as a kind of substitute controlling presence in place of my father perhaps. At any rate the dream transported me to the house or apartment of my dream Hispanic ladyfriend. It was a second floor apartment. She was wearing khakis. Anabela’s apartment in Alverca (where I’ve not been) is a second floor apartment. Where is it? London? I dreamed once before of an apartment like this. Her mother asked if I had a girlfriend. Only your daughter I responded not knowing what her reaction would be. It was OK. She smiled. There was a gang of youths nearby, somewhat threatening, like the gang attacked me years ago on Feltonville’s Wyoming Avenue near Ella Street knocked me unconscious, robbed me. When I was with her, there in the second floor apartment, there as I watched through the window her going off to the store across the street, there in the dream I knew that I was with the woman I wanted to be with forever, for the rest of my life, a feeling I had never really felt before, even in dream, a feeling some feel I suppose when one is young and on the straight and narrow path I inadvertently left.