In last night’s dream
you two showed me round
your spacious new apartment.
First the dining room, with
table chairing a committee
of chairs, and I suggested
moving the piano nearer the window;
then the sitting room;
then an empty hallway; and then
the bedroom. Why only the one?
The planner of dreams
immediately pointed to one more,
and then yet more – there were many indeed,
many dark rooms for sleeping / dreaming.
In last night’s dream
the two of you almost didn’t hate
each other, the way it was in that communal
dump, bog-standard stinkhole,
where for thirty years you lived
beneath signs saying TURN THE LIGHTS OFF!,
and LIGHTS OFF WHEN YOU LEAVE!
None of that here, thank God.
‘The only trouble is,’ I heard you say,
‘the underground will never reach this far;
to get to here you have to wait and change
a dozen times at least,
arms weighed down with shopping bags,
then there’s the boredom, the staring into the gloom,
the nightly crush when people don’t converse...’
These strictures were anonymous,
seemingly shared, telling me that to move in here
would be very difficult, it’d be for the best
if I left, got out of the dream,
woke up, in fact.
And when I looked back for the last time
at this building of yours, the lights
in the windows were going out. Being switched off.
As they went out, your new abode,
all of a piece, faded into the gloom.
I have a fairly good idea why
it saw me off with hostile mien.
But there was something sad to it as well.