Poetry | December 01, 2009
Poetry Feature: Richard Bausch
Richard Bausch
Featuring the poems:
- Dream Poems for Lisa, in Distance: Dream Poem 1
- Dream Poem 3
- Dream Poem 4
- Dream Poem 6
- Dream Poem 7
- Dream Poem 10 (featured as Poem of the Week, Feb. 2, 2010)
Dream Poem 10
I chased sleep all night. We two went far & wide,
Through Time & times,
Old ghosts. He wore a cloak that made him look derelict,
Like a tramp.
He also had a cane & feigned a limp, but I
Wasn’t fooled.
I asked him where you were. He said he didn’t know.
But he would
Show me if I just followed him a few more years.
We went so far
I couldn’t catch him, though his limp grew worse, but he
led me on.
In Athens, we were greeted like two old kind kings,
& asked to stay.
Everyone claimed to have seen you only yesterday.
“Yesterday’s
A vast desert,” I said. “There are so many town
To keep track of.”
No one would listen. Sleep grew weary of the talk.
So we went on.
By now I only wished for him to let his guard
Down, so I could
Corner him. But he went on, kept out of reach.
My legs grew long
As bamboo stalks & thin as thoughts of money to
A man like me.
High in the hills of China, near that wall, I caught
Him. We went down
In a tide of dust & stones, a rage of ash & smoke.
It looked like war.
I dragged him by his feet across the continents,
& finally
Across the sea, the polar caps, the mountains, hills,
& dreaming rivers,
To this old town made out of songs, this street, this house,
This empty house.
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