Lilith

Lilith by Andre Clements
Lilith

Drawing a shroud on a distant yet lucid recollection
a visitation, in its place
drawing a shroud that is impossible to draw
on a memory of falling
upwards through a veil,
teased
touched
tormented yet consoled and even requited
in the maddening and in the silence,

as per Edgar Alan Poe’s ‘A Dream Within A Dream’:

‘Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow–
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand–
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep–while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?’

Dated ~ March 2010


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