life is but a dream, more or less

[lapin_agile]

Oh, poetry month, I fail you!¿Qué es la vida? Un frenesí.

¿Qué es la vida? Una ilusión,

una sombra, una ficción,

y el mayor bien es pequeño;

que toda la vida es sueño,

y los sueños, sueños son.
     ~Pedro Calderón de la Barca

Comments

[black_dog]

The houses are haunted
By white night-gowns.
None are green,
Or purple with green rings,
Or green with yellow rings,
Or yellow with blue rings.
None of them are strange,
With socks of lace
And beaded ceintures.
People are not going
To dream of baboons and periwinkles.
Only, here and there, an old sailor,
Drunk and asleep in his boots,
Catches tigers
In red weather.

-- Wallace Stevens

[lapin_agile]

It's funny, but I find that I appreciate Stevens more every time I return to him.People are not going to dream of baboons and periwinkles.
Quel dommage. It's true, we aren't, darn it since we're, most of us, not anything like old sailors. And then you have to wonder if you really envy the old sailors or not. And what it means to fail to be one.

Pansy Parkinson and Regulus Black have been talking about poetry and dreams this weekend, too.