Just imagine what I dreamed.
Everything as if the way it is.
Ground beneath your feet, water, fire, air,
vertical, horizontal, triangle, circle,
left and right.
Reasonable weather, decent scenery,
a fair number of creatures endowed with speech.
But their speech is different than here on Earth.
Sentences are governed by the unconditional.
Names stick strictly to things.
Nothing to add, subtract, change, rearrange.
Time always by the clock.
Past and future know their place.
For remembrance a single vanished second,
for predictions a moment
that has already begun.
Words as needed. Not one more,
which means no poetry,
no philosophy, no religion.
Such follies don’t come into play.
Nothing that can just be thought
or seen with eyes shut.
Search only for what’s right at hand.
Ask only if there are answers.
They’d be amazed,
if they could be amazed,
that somewhere there are reasons for amazement.
The entry for “uneasy,” considered lewd,
wouldn’t dare to appear in their dictionaries.
The world seems clear
even in deepest darkness.
Each is charged a suitable price.
No one asks for change at the cashier’s.
Among feelings—satisfaction. And no parentheses.
Life with a full stop at its heel. And the hum of galaxies.
Admit that nothing worse
could happen to a poet.
And afterward nothing better
than waking up.