It is Finished

I.

Though every life necessarily contains oddness and improbability,

the aberrant occurrences of my life cannot be countenanced:

this afternoon I realize that I have been dreaming.

It is natural that I should have taken the fantasy

for the waking world; women were sometimes very pretty,

drugs functioned properly, the newspapers were unsurprising.

That my love should abandon her vows, in itself,

would signify little or nothing: this is as predictable

as bloody headlines and changing leaves.

Her continual presence at my doorway after our estrangement

beggared my faculties, though now there is an explanation.

II.

This afternoon is Easter, so I was unable to spend my pocketful of dimes on beer.

I had forgotten the holiday until I saw the blank windows of the closest restaurant.

I sighed and turned back. On the sidewalk a woman of immense girth approached.

I stood aside and looked at my shoes, then smelled apple blossoms

and was thrown headlong into memory-

My older sister, brother, and I trade bites from a red apple in our front yard;

the air is hot and the juice runs down our wrists.

What the fuck is this?

A scent memory? I know from encyclopedia articles

that scent memories are quite common and strong,

but in twenty years and more I have never had one.

Deceptions always crack at the borders.

Clever dream, to hold me so long!

How long, then, have I slumbered?

When I die in this place, when shall I awake?

The first day of the month of war, anno Domini 2013,

sleeping in the arms of my love?

The first night that I saw my fallen star?

The moment before I climbed a terrace thick with vines

to enter a second story window and the first woman

that fate had chosen for me?

Lord, some of the women in this dream!

Though I never had more than a few of them, I will be sorry

to lose their clavicles, their delicately curling hair,

their curves and curves.

Listen and I shall paint my portrait.

I am tall, cruel, jealous, quick to anger,

and convinced of my supremacy.

If I were not dreaming,

why should I resemble the gods so closely?

 How shall I escape? Am I brave enough to have steel kiss my veins,

or will it have to be the warm embrace of a train?

I may have imagined many things.

It may be that when I wake much will be lost.

Perhaps in the true world Publius Ovidius Naso

was a lawyer and Andres Segovia lost a hand at six years old.

Perhaps my love, with all the horrors of her life, was never born.

It may be that I am wrong. It has happened on rare occasions.

Perhaps when I take my life, the void will take me;

perhaps there is some factor I have not yet seen that makes all this real.

However, I will not be dissuaded by such doubts.

So I may perish forevermore? What of it?

If this is the scope of existence, I do not wish to take part any longer.

After I have become light I will be with her again.