2
" The Dream
Lord Byron
Our life is twofold; Sleep hath its own world,
A boundary between the things misnamed
Death and existence: Sleep hath its own world,
And a wide realm of wild reality,
And dreams in their development have breath,
And tears, and tortures, and the touch of joy;
They leave a weight upon our waking thoughts,
They take a weight from off waking toils,
They do divide our being; they become
A portion of ourselves as of our time,
And look like heralds of eternity;
They pass like spirits of the past -they speak
Like sibyls of the future; they have power -
The tyranny of pleasure and of pain;
They make us what we were not -what they will,
And shake us with the vision that's gone by,
The dread of vanished shadows -Are they so?
Is not the past all shadow? -What are they?
Creations of the mind? -The mind can make
Substances, and people planets of its own
With beings brighter than have been, and give
A breath to forms which can outlive all flesh.
I would recall a vision which I dreamed
Perchance in sleep -for in itself a thought,
A slumbering thought, is capable of years,
And curdles a long life into one hour.
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Il sogno
Lord Byron
Duplice è la nostra vita: il Sonno ha il suo proprio mondo,
un confine tra le cose chiamate impropriamente
morte e esistenza: il Sonno ha il proprio mondo,
e un vasto reame di sfrenata realtà;
e nel loro svolgersi i sogni hanno respiro,
e lacrime e tormenti e sfiorano la gioia;
lasciano un peso sui nostri pensieri da svegli,
tolgono un peso dalle nostre fatiche da svegli,
dividono il nostro essere; diventano
parte di noi stessi e del nostro tempo,
e sembrano gli araldi dell'eternità;
passano come fantasmi del passato, parlano
come Sibille dell'avvenire; hanno potere -
la tirannia del piacere e del dolore;
ci rendono ciò che non fummo, secondo il loro volere,
e ci scuotono con dissolte visioni,
col terrore di svanite ombre. Ma sono veramente così?
Non è forse tutto un'ombra il passato? Cosa sono?
Creazioni della mente? La mente sa creare
sostanza, e popolare pianeti, di sua fattura,
di esseri più splendenti di quelli mai esistiti, e dare
respiro e forma che sopravvivono alla carne.
Vorrei richiamare una visione che ho sognato
forse nel sonno, poiché in sé un pensiero,
un pensiero assopito, racchiude anni,
e in un'ora condensa una lunga vita. "
― Lord Byron
9
" NAMING THE EARTH
(a poem of light for national poetry day)
And the world will be born again
in circles of steaming breath
and beams of light
as each one of us directs
our inner eye
upon its name.
Hear the cry of wings,
the sigh of leaves and grass,
smell the new sweet mist rising
as the pathway is cleared at last.
Stones stand ready -
they have known
since ages and ages ago
that they were not alone.
Water carries the planet's energy
into skies and down
to earth and bones.
The cold parts steadily
as we come together,
bodies and hearts warm,
hands tingling.
We are silent
but our eyes are singing.
We look, we feel, we know,
we trust each other's souls,
we have no need to speak.
Not now, but later,
when the time is right,
the name will ring
within the iron core
of each other's listening -
and the very earth's being.
Every creature, every plant,
will hear it calling,
tolling like a bell -
a sound we've always felt
but never dared to hope
to hear reverberating -
true at last, at every level
of existence.
The poets come together
to open the intimate centre.
Believe
in life and air -
breathe the light itself,
for these are the energies
and rhythms that we need
to see, to touch, to reach,
to identify, to say, the NAME.
Colours on your skin
fuse and dissolve -
leave the river clean
for pure space and time
to enter and flow in.
We all become one fluid stream
of stillness and motion,
of flaring thought
pulses discovering
weird pools and twists within
where darkness hides
from the flames in our eyes
but will not snare us.
We probe deeper still,
journeying towards a unity
which will be more raw
and yet also more formed
than anything written
or spoken before.
Our fragile bodies
fall away -
and the trees,
and the roots of trees,
guide us -
lead us away
from the faces we remember
seeing each day in the mirror -
into an ocean
of dreams
seething with warmth,
love,
where the beginning
is real,
ripe, evolving.
And the world is born again
in circles of steaming breath
and beams of light.
An ache -
a signal -
a trembling moment -
and the time is right
to say the name.
We sing as one whole
voice of the universal -
all the words, the names
of every tiny thirsting thing,
and they ring out together
as one sound,
one energy, one sense,
one vibration, one breath.
And the world listens,
beats, shines, glows -
IS -
Exists! "
― Jay Woodman
