Category: Written in 1998

“Dream, softly, dream,” the white moon gently cries;
“Dream, softly, dream,” the stars sing to night skies;
“Dream, softly, dream,” says the earth to the trees;
“Dream, softly, dream,” sighs the warm, rustling breeze;
“Dream, softly, dream,” croons the cascading sea;
“Dream, softly, dream,” murmurs each night to me.

The world lies dreaming, softly, in its sleep;
Time moves on and, in shadows, it does creep,
Slowly, but surely, it moves on. That flower,
So gaily bright in its grassy bower,
Can’t retain its charm to greet the next day:
For this blooming night, itself, shall not stay.
The stars shall fade; the skies will dress in blue;
The bright moon will grow dim and will fade, too.
The sea will pull away from sparkling sand,
As the moon turns the tide with her pale hand.
The orange of the sun shall melt the dark;
It will touch all with each reddish-gold spark;
The dew shall turn into diamonds, then
Out of thousands shall lie hundreds, and when
The warmly blowing breeze grows hotter still,
The dew shall fade, too, under golden will.

But that is the future I think of now –
Now, when the night still rests upon earth’s brow.
The clock strikes and I hear its lilting chime,
I could place each note in this falt’ring rhyme;
But the world of music makes my heart ache
And I can’t again let my poor heart break.
My mind and my heart, they are all I own:
I can tell not which from the one has grown.
As the stars bed down with the moon this night,
I am the dark, though all around there’s light.
This night will end like the others; and yet
The pain each brings, I choose not to forget.

In my life, there has been great agony,
For my memory never leaves me be.
I need a moment of blankness of mind;
But my mind is everything – but kind.
It knows my eyes have before them a night,
Yet it warns me of the day full of light,
Where I judge my heart with objective sight
And decide if it has been wrong or right
To tell me, “Dream, softly, dream, lover o’mine,
“For in dreams, there is no danger of time.”
On hearing this, my mind screams out a laugh
And calls my heart a ruined cenotaph.

Amidst this war, I lie, quivering, in bed,
To curse my fool heart and curse my vain head.
My eyes drift from the trees to the quiet lea
They, too, whisper, “dream, softly, dream” to me.
Salty water accumulates and flows
Down my cheeks. My mind now, in laughter, knows
For now, it has achieved a victory –
O’er a dreaming heart that belongs to me.

My eyes, filled with useless water, still gaze
Upon the starry sky, that is ablaze
With light. Then I recall what I once was:
One with my heart; oblivious to flaws
That belonged to a life, full of soft dreams –
Now killed by my mind with its learnéd schemes.
I roamed the roads and gardens of my life,
Believing my dreams, with no trace of strife,
Those were the days I was but a mere child,
Nature, to me, was a call from the wild,
The sky was a place where all birds could fly,
And someday, somehow, I thought, so would I.
The rain was God watering his garden,
Which with butterflies and blooms was laden;
The stars were gems that had wishes to give
And the moon was a place where angels lived.

As I grew, my dreams accompanied me.
Life was spent roaming in felicity.
There grew, in my blooming heart, thoughts of love,
I cherished them in a dream-sheltered cove.
I believed someday an angel’d swoop down,
To make from his wings a feath’ry love-crown,
That I would wear making me soar and soar,
With him to live in the sky fore’ermore.

That was my dream and little did I know
That this dream of mine would torture me so.
To beget one’s dream is a wondrous thought!
But knowing that fate would just one half bring –
Is a cruel way!
To colour a bud
But before it blooms to crush it in mud –
Is a cruel way!
To let a heart dream,
Feel one part and leave the other to seem –
Is a cruel way.

Oh, he came. He came.
He came and my life will ne’er be the same!
To me, he flew from the silvery moon,
His wings beating an enchanted tune.
He was a bright piece of the moon – and I,
I knew he was meant only for the sky.
But when I heard him sing his love for me,
I lived dreams of love and eternity.

Fool me! To think that an angel, who sings,
Would live with me, amongst lone, earth-bound things.
But he came to me, on his wings of fire,
And he taught me love, unleashed my desire.
He roamed the earth with me; and showed me how
This pained world before those in love does bow.
He gave his love and, yes, made me a crown
That rests on my head still, of palest down.
Though I do, I am not able to fly,
Then, in my joy, I forgot to ask – why?

I lived with him, for so many a day;
And went on dreaming, as my heart did say,
He spoke to me of skies, birds and their tunes;
I told him stories of shifting sand dunes.
He sang to me praises of life on the moon
And I tried to sing my earth’s hopeful tune.

Then the time came.

He had to someday fly –
His wings were wasting with me by and by –
He had to use them, yes, he had to fly –
He had to fly away into the sky –
And I – could do nothing to stop his flight.
I knew I loved him – and love has no right.
He was made to fly and live in the moon
And I always knew he would leave me soon.

The night he spread his wings to fly away,
I knew my dream had not arrived to stay.
To talk of tears we shed, is a waste now,
For many many more have raped my brow;
All I remember are his wings, that moon,
And vows to care not for another tune.
I recall a vow of return – for I
Could never fly and touch that starry sky.

That was my dream.

And little did I know
That this dream of mine would torture me so.
I love him still – how can I not? You see,
My heart and mind find compatibility
In this. My heart will not let me forget:
Love, like a diamond, has in its crest set,
While my mind scorns my stubborn, stabbing heart
And wishes the pain it caused to ne’er part:
For if I feel the pain my heart rendered,
I may yet find it to reality surrendered.

My eyes have dried and my body lies still.
My feelings surge within my muse. They fill
Each thought with sadness. I look at each star
Glimmering, dazzling, twinkling from afar.
Then I turn my eyes to that silvery moon
And strain to hear a bare hint of a tune.

Nothing!
The silence of the night hits me –
Like a slap on the face from an enemy –
I rise up stunned my eyes dart around –
From the stars to the moon from sky to ground –
Anxiety builds pushes up and pummels –
My inside wrenches my gut and doubles
My terror!
“What now?” I hear my mind scream.

Faint at first, I just hear, “Dream, softly, dream.”
And then, hear I, the rustling of the trees,
Then the sighing of the warm, blowing breeze,
The crinkling of grass upon the soft earth,
And the soaking of the dew into dirt.
I look up to see stars smiling at me,
Feel the moon encouraging a wild sea,
With its glorious, silver-handed stream,
Telling me to yet believe in my dream.

I hear and see all this and check my fears;
My eyes grow moist – there again are my tears!
I fear – hope! To hope is to prepare pain!
My mind stores pain to bring it up again
And again. My heart hopes, so is helpless
Against this world, my mind and loneliness –
But, as is its wont, it looks to the moon
And still waits to hear a remembered tune.

Despite my mind, my eyes follow its stare
And my heart feels soft white wings flaying there
And angel eyes that shall always love me…
My eyes return the tears of destiny;
And my mind asks: “Can it be, can it be?”
Baring its fangs of coarse futility.

The darkness of night begins to grow deep;
I sit back and lay my mind down to sleep.
The full moon seems to move closer to me;
My heart states: “It has to – it has to be!”
I reach out to hold the moon’s glitt’ring beam
And, through tears, tell my heart: “Dream softly dream.”

4th-5th February
edited on 13th February ’08.