Invisible Mending by C. K. Williams

Author:C. K. Williams
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

History

I have escaped in the dream; I was in danger, at peril, at immediate, furious, frightening risk,

but I deftly evaded the risk, eluded the danger, I conned peril to think I’d gone that way,

then I went this, then this way again, over the bridges of innocence, into the haven of sorrow.

I was so shrewd in my moment of risk, so cool: I was as guileful as though I were guilty,

sly, devious, cunning, though I’d done nothing in truth but be who I was where I was

when the dream conceived me as a threat I wasn’t, possessed of a power I’d never had,

though I had found enough strength to flee and the guileful wherewithal to elude and be free.

I have escaped and survived, but as soon as I think it, it starts again, I’m hounded again:

no innocence now, no unlikeliest way, only this frenzied combing of the countries of mind

where I always believed I’d find safety and solace but where now are confusion and fear

and a turmoil so total that all I have known or might know drags me with it towards chaos.

That, in this space I inhabit, something fearsome is happening, headlong, with an awful momentum,

is never in doubt, but that’s all I can say—no way even to be sure if I’m victim or oppressor;

absurd after all this not to know if I’m subject or object, scapegoat, perpetrator, or prey.

The dream is of beings like me, assembled, surrounded, herded like creatures, driven, undone.

And beings like me, not more like me but like me, assemble and herd them, us; undo us.

No escape now, no survival: captured, subjugated, undone, we all move through dreams of negation.

Subject, object, dream doesn’t care; accumulate or subtract, self as solace, self-blame.

Thou shalt, thou shalt not; thus do I, thus I do not: dream is indifferent, bemused, abstracted.

Formulation, abstraction; assembly, removal: the dream detached; exaltation, execration, denial.

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