I follow nights as days should follow me,
The first in dreams, through light the others free…
If death were all for us, who’d follow dreams or not
Be death himself, at least? Forget the light, I say,
As dreamers needn’t see that dreams are all we’ve got…
‘tis yet so hard a life to be a dreamer, aye…
Remember I, oh dreamless Daedy, still
The day thou gavest me wings thine,
And I did grant thy apodictic will:
“Hey, laddy, come! Oh, come be mine!
You flow within me like the night
When there is nothing but the light
Within me left to go away;
You follow through me like the day
Whilst days of death await divide
My wasting breath, and then subside…
Thus, out of dreams my sleep do bother
To make my death that of your father!”
And thine to be I then became
A perfect dream to heal thy sorrow,
But most of all to bear a name,
For idle incubus a morrow…
That stranger to this all beyond myself have flown
A tragic dreamer I, and ‘twas not night but day,
Couldst thou explain at all? Since had wings of my own
What need was there for thine? Thou wantedst things thy way.
And things thy way were done,
Thus free thou like no other…
What for? Thou dreams hadst none
But one befallen, father!
‘twas neither youth nor impetus
Enough to make thee, old man, see
There is in fact no terminus,
No flight to set a spirit free;
‘twas but thy son to follow thee,
When dream there is still free no other –
And thou perchance hast had it, father –
Save taking back athanasy…
Oh, that I did, for then could see,
Though blind ‘neath beds of acorus,
A light within, and rose to be
The perfect dreamer: Icarus.
But not to have seen
To be
Would have been death
Above me…
So this I say:
Let dreamers be!