Bottom’s Dream

It shall be called ‘Bottom’s Dream’, because it hath no bottom…

I was a weaver, and I wove

The moody fabric of my dream.

By day I laboured at the loom

And glimpsed the image of a love

              I now know bottomless.

We were young men. We played our parts.

We schooled ourselves in the quiet wood.

By night the moon, which draws the flood,

Tugged at the rhythms of our hearts.

              And they were bottomless.

I loved a girl who was a boy;

I took my stand and beat my breast.

Yet what was I but fool and beast,

Who did not so much speak as bray,

             In bombast bottomless?

I trusted I had mastery,

Until one night, being left alone,

I snorted at the wandering moon

In terror of the mystery,

              Which seemed quite bottomless,

And out of that she spoke, who had

No voice, although she stirred my sense,

Who touched me, though she had no hands,

And led me where you cannot lead,

              Since it is bottomless.

I tried to speak: again I brayed.

I pinched and scratched my face: coarse hairs

Were crisping over cheeks and ears.

And when she drew me in, she made

              The whole world bottomless.