The Old Man’s Dream After He Died
The nights of many
years before this time
He had been dreaming the sweetness of death, as a starved man
dreams bread, but now decomposition
Reversed the chemistry; who had adored in sleep under so many
disguises the dark redeemer
In death across a thousand metaphors of form and action celebrated
life. Whatever he had wanted
To do or become was now accomplished, each bud that had been
nipped and fallen grew out to a branch,
Sparks of desire forty years quenched flamed up fulfilment.
Out of time, undistracted by the nudging pulse-beat, perfectly
real to itself being insulated
From all touch of reality the dream triumphed, building from
past experience present paradise
More intense as the decay quickened, but ever more primitive
as it proceeded, until the ecstasy
Soared through a flighty carnival of wines and women to the
simple delight of eating flesh, and tended
Even higher, to an unconditional delight. But then the interconnections
between the groups of the brain
Failing, the dreamer and the dream split into multitude. Soon the
altered cells became unfit to express
Any human or at all describable form of consciousness.