there is no better key to dreams
than my name sang a bird
in a lake of blood
the sea danced alongside
dressed in blue-jeans
blowing the squalling gulls to bits
a black boatman
who claimed to know the stars
said he could cure with the mud of his sad eyes
the lepers of their leprosy
if a tonic love would unloose his arms
my name is key to dreams
I am not leprous
take me across this river before you speak my name
and your arms will be unloosed
I hold the singing oar
where is this river I must cross
is it that lake of blood
follow me
close your eyes
think of the moon
contemplate my river
and let us cross
the man and the bird sang
steered three days three nights to cross
the dirty bed of a river
listen
the wave rocks the boatman
he sleeps
he dreams
a charnel house offers a feast
where his bowels are eaten first
then his arms then his memory
where the putrid bodies eat each other
by the glimmer of fire-flies
which each carries at his temples
striving to resemble the christian god
there where they drink the slow song of the nightingale
one innocent pities his legs
scrapes from the bowl of ebony-wood
the last scrap of his memory
rope dancer on the thread
of low-water mark
He knows the love which opposes his pain
the nightmares of the boatman in his troubled sleep
the wings of the birds who float their anthem
and who row too happily over the singing water
on the far bank the plain comes to drink
with its troops of wild grasses
bellowing their thirst in a tropical rhythm
while the peevish sun stabs at them
the sun pricks the side of the fisherman
his swords all newly forged
all newly tempered
with blood
and this blood oozes from the earth
and trickles from the sky
on a night of yellow rain
the boatman tells his name to the quail
no my name is key to dreams
I am not leprous
quail is not my name
do not die awaiting me
I am your soul farewell
my dark body farewell
your arms will unloose themselves
I am not leprous
do not die awaiting me
arms opened in a cross
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