Dreamer
1 There are few probabilities through
Which dreamers do not pass. . .
The first dream
Is the bright red dream
Of our mother’s heart.
It is her sacrifice
Of something eternal
In herself, for us.
The Arabs say
Blood has flowed
Let us begin again.
The heart is like a cup, or a coffer,
or a cave. It holds the image of the
sun within us. It is a center of illumination
and happiness and wisdom. To dream
of the heart is always to dream of
the importance of love. . .
The second dream is the inauguration
Of the soul. In this dream we are
Confronted by a host of birds. . .
Some were guileless
Like the doves,
Said Odo of Tusculum,
Cunning
Like the partridges.
Some came to the hand
Like the hawks.
Others fled from it
Like the hens,
Some enjoyed the company
Of people
Like swallows,
Others preferred solitude
Like the turtledoves,
But all eventually flew away.
“Living is not necessary, but navigation
is,” said Pompey the Great.
B. 1725, London
Mother devout as gunpowder
Seemingly clairvoyant
Taught her only child
To read by four
Arithmetic and Latin by six
Dies when he is seven.
I am dreaming
I am in the dark
And it is raining
And she is the rain.
To dream that you are in the dark
is a sign of difficulties ahead; if
you fall or hurt yourself you can expect
a change for the worse, but if you
succeed in groping to the light, that
is another matter. . .
Father, master of ships,
Lively in the Mediterranean trade,
Unusual qualities —
Educated in Spain, stern.
I listen to nothing
But the silence
Of my father; the dream
Says
He is the rudder
And the compass.
If, in your dreams, you see your
father and he speaks to you, it is
a sign of coming happiness. If he is
silent, or if he appears to be ill or
dead, then you may expect trouble. . .
Sent to sea at ten,
Acted like a verb in disagreement,
Of course
Bright,
But no eagle —
A mess.
I have vague
Dreams now
Of intelligent flowers.
I cannot say
If their roots
Are in the ground
Or in the air.
By seventeen
A wildflower
In the field of Jesus.
Pious, books, fasting,
Abstinence from meat,
A canon in his meditation
And silence,
But like the weeds
Loved to curse.
Flowers, one of nature’s best dreams.
This foretells great happiness, unless
you throw away the blossoms. . .
1742
A lot more flexible,
Falls in love,
Misses his ship,
A freethinker now,
Less of a thorn
In the side of God.
I dream that I
Am always with her,
A freckle on her wrist,
A flower in her hair,
A ridiculous flying fish —
Sliced
And dressed
And set on the table.
As I told you before,
He missed his ship,
Became a lover
Rather than a Jamaican
Planter,
Father as expected
Furious.
Love is a dream of contraries as far
as sweethearts are concerned. To dream
that you do not succeed in love is a
sign that you will marry and have
a happy life. To dream that you are in
the company of your lover is also fortunate. . .
Late 1743
Kidnapped into the Navy
(What else)
Coming from Mary’s house.
Taken from his own life,
Focused into new pieces.
I dream about my fortune,
A fragrance captured
In a jar,
A freckle without a wrist,
A wisp
Foxlike at the edge
Of the wind.
Fortune is a dream of contraries: the more
fortunate and successful you are in imagination,
the greater will be your real struggles. . .
How do we fit together
When we are not free?
What kind of animal are we?
How many heads do we have?
How many tails?
The sea
Is a strange piece of property
On which to discuss this,
On the hms Hardwick
One month later
Midshipman John Newton:
I have eaten war
Like a cluster
Of delicious fruit.
The ironic juices
Running from my lips
That was my dream.
The reality of war is the dream of it. Beware
of those things that appear so friendly
but have no reason. . .
1774
The Hardwick
Ordered to the East Indies.
First our hero visits Mary again.
(You’re wrong)
Almost misses ship,
Completely misses the point.
Given small boat of men
To go ashore at Plymouth,
Deserts.
My dreams here
Were father, compass,
Fog, leakage,
And ultimately, learning,
With us
Like our laundry.
We are always pulling from our past. Fossils
are the dream of the sickness of someone
you have not met for a long time. When
this happens brew herbs, add honey
and lemon, sip and inhale deeply. . .
Captured like a frog,
Returned, put in irons,
Stripped, flogged, degraded,
Returned to foremast.
This is that point many people would
call a black moment, an unfortunate
color on things. I will not do that. For
black is a contrary at funerals and our
hero has just died a little as we
all tend to from time to time. And even
though that is true I will not do
that either. I will not talk of the great
white moment of death, I will not talk
of the great blue and purple moments
in the prosperity of pain. I will not
talk of the great red or scarlet moments
of quarrels and loss of friends, or
the crimson pleasure of the unexpected,
the mental tints of yellow and orange
that show you should always expect
change, or the feeling of knowing green
because you have been on a long journey.
All the colors are conjurers when our
mysteries are being solved. And if this could
not be his dream then by now it should
be ours. . .
We are not holy
The wind says in the sails
As he works.
It has never been otherwise
Though we live in the most
Devout of stories like litmus paper
Constantly changing color
Just to prove something
Is happening.
The sadness in his dream is a good omen
for the future. It is a quest for lasting joy,
and so is punishment a dream of unexpected
pleasure. . .
Works quietly for weeks.
His silence
Darns a temperate
Healing thread
His eyes
Become an elaborate
Decorative art
Avoiding everyone.
“Every month,” said Cicero
“the moon contemplates
its trajectory
and the shrubs
and animals grow.”
He has done to himself
What is easy.
He must now blossom
Out of his new secrets
Even if joy is ephemeral.
Suddenly
He begins to sing,
Creates songs about fish
And clouds.
Fish are a dream of penetrative motion,
clouds are a dream of appearances always
in a state of change. . .
We must be patient
With the overfecundity
Of his youth.
We must let him
Climb and descend the mast
Like a weapon.
Trade him
To a slaver’s ship
To subdue the threat
To discipline
In his strangely awakening
Joy.
We must let him
Choose his monsters
And the myths
Of his own worth —
The enemy always being
The forces threatening
From within.
Paul said, “We wrestle not against flesh
and blood, but against principalities, against
powers, against the rulers of the darkness
of this world, against spiritual wickedness in
high places. . .”
Suddenly,
Begins to breathe
Different songs
In his six-months’ stay
Along the Sierra Leone coast.
Troublesome songs,
Songs of quick wit
And devastating rhymes
Ridiculing ship’s officers,
Crew loves them,
Becomes a choir.
To dream that you hear other people
singing shows that the difficulties
that will come for you will come through
your dealings with other people. . .
The irate mate
Assuming command
After the death of the captain
Threatens
To put Newton
On a man-o’-war.
The Royal Navy is not an obstacle dream;
it is an elaborate exhibition of the
nuances of living death. . .
Occupation: slave dealer
Place: Sierra Leone
On one of the Plantanes
Features: Short, white male
Name: Clow
Other information: Black wife
Name: sounds like P.I.
John Newton
Bargains his life
Into this extravagant story.
He will become a slave
Because P.I. will hate him.
He will become ill
With fever.
He will be denied
Food,
Denied water,
Tormented by Black slaves
On command,
Put to work
On a lime tree plantation
Enjoying only the scents
And dreaming
Of his earthly desires,
Will master the six books
Of Euclid,
Drawing the diagrams
With a long stick
In the wet sand.
Six is, like two, a particularly ambiguous
number to dream about, but it
establishes equilibrium. It unifies
the triangles of fire and water and
symbolizes the human soul. Six is
the hermaphrodite, a personality integrated
despite its duality.
If this is a story
Of the reasoning of slavery,
Where are we?
What have we been doing
To people,
To the light
From which life emanates?
Slavery is a story
Of procreation,
Of magic religious thinking,
Of the androgynous divinity
Within us.
No story can be this happy
Unless it is married
To something deeply within us.
It is not them
Who have done it to us,
Or us
Who have done it to them.
It is the antagonistic dream
Of unreconciled love.
To dream of erotic love is to dream of
the desire to die in the object of desire, to
dissolve in that which is already
dissolved. The Book of Baruch says erotic
desire and its satisfaction is the key
to the origin of the world. Disappointment
in love and the revenge which follows
in its wake are the roots of all the evil
and selfishness in the world. The whole
of history is the work of love.
2 “The character of the image,” said Shukrâchârya,
“is determined by the relationship between
the worshipper and the worshipped.”
On the beach,
He eats the fruit
Of his own way;
He fills himself
With his own devices;
He continues to draw
In the sand.
Each grain
Is a small,
Precise form
Of salvation
That has occurred,
A god come to earth
In another form,
A private,
Innate sacrifice.
Providence does not tire.
We are ready to go on
With the story.
It has come to this:
When his father dreams
He only sees
The broad face
Of sadness,
The soft grassland
Where only asphodels grow,
And the idea of water
Expanding into tears.
But to dream of sadness is a good
omen, a transportation of suffering to the
spiritual: this dream is like an herb,
a seasoning, a bitter root, medicinal,
something poisonous, but nevertheless
something that eventually withers away.
When you
Come on to squally weather,
When the wind
Is about SW,
When
You sway up the yard
Fix the trysail,
Put people to making
Sennit and swab,
Ask for my son.
Ask the Lamb,
The Beverly, the Golden Lyon,
Ask Job Lewis,
Have you seen my boy?
Have you seen my boy?
One thousand years before Christ, Solomon
said that the way of a ship in the midst
of the sea was too wonderful for him
to understand.
Meanwhile,
Clow: shamed
Into freeing his fellow
White man.
After all
They share the same hair,
The same instinctual life,
The same irrational power.
There is no victim here:
This is a story of love’s
Sadness,
Of the spirit of love’s ferocity
And savage insensibility,
And the name of Jesus
Turned in hymns,
Spewed into the fringes
Of the forest,
Spewed on the deep blue sea.
What dream is this, is that what you said?
My God, this is the dream of the dragon,
the fabulous animal, the amalgam of
aggression, the serpent, the crocodile, the
lion, what we like to think is the
antediluvian nature of love.
John is free now.
John is free to slave,
Free to be reluctant,
To give up profit
and return home.
Ask the master of the Greyhound.
Have you seen my boy?
Have you seen my boy?
To find money in your dream is not fortunate
at all. There will be some sudden advancement
or success, but it will prove
disappointing. Reader, remember this
statement by Virgil, “It will be pleasant
to remember these things hereafter.”
You cannot blame
The sea on a woman.
Unlike the seasons
It has no ribs
Though
It has a crown,
Wears a sheath,
Swings a sickle,
Adores the sun,
And is known
As bareheaded and leafless.
The sea is the emblem
Of the great capricious world;
The naked image of flux
Vibrating between life and death.
There is a dream called “Dire is the tossing
deep the groans; come let us heel, list
and stoop.” And when John heard this
on his way home, it was as if he
had read 2 Kings 10:16, “Come with me
[brother] and see my zeal for the lord.”
For twelve months
The Greyhound
Sought gold,
Ivory, dyer’s wood,
Beeswax,
And Newton sought the Lord.
The way of a ship in the midst of the sea
is too wonderful to understand.
Youth is not innocence.
It is not a militant puzzlement.
It is a methodological initiation
Into the ubiquitous life
Of sin.
For a life without sin
Is no life at all.
And so he wanders on
Like Paul,
So very Christian about it,
At once wretched and delivered.
Thinking with his mind
He is serving God,
But with his flesh
The law of sin.
Call out John Newton.
Call out
To Joshua, Ruth,
Samuel, Obadiah,
Esther, Zechariah,
Luke and Timothy.
The world
Is a masterfully round
Secret
That embraces everything,
And it is time
To reach into the horizon,
Now.
It is time to choose
Your ship,
And the triangle of your life
Upon the salty sea.
As you can see, dreams are without reason,
without solution, without proof, the
unedited version of our love, our aspiration,
our hurt. . . Call out John Newton. Call out. . .
Back home
Offered captaincy of ship.
Refuses.
Sails as first mate
On the Brownlow.
Collects slaves.
Takes them to South Carolina.
He begins to dream of questions: “What
was the mode used in stowing the slaves
in their apartments?”
Returns home,
Marries Mary Cattlett,
Assumes first command,
The Duke of Argyle,
140 tons burthen.
Marriage is the dream of sulfur and
mercury. Some believe it is a most fortunate
omen, a volatile conciliation, a fragile
union. They are right. It is one of the great
uncharted seas of individuation. It is
said, “If you are separated from your
opposite you consume yourself away. . .”
Dead reckoning
Magnetical Amplitude W° 25.30N°
True Amplitude W° 6.30°
Variation 19° in Western
Lattitude per Account 50° 48m
One-third of the slaves will die
In middle passage
Some say fifty million
Started the trip
Some say fifteen.
The dream of questions is a bright necklace
with two ornaments on it: liberty and
love, not truth.
“At noon some small rain. . .
Had an indifferent observation. . .”
“We take the two men-boys
For some shallop rigging,
We do not take
The two fallen-breasted women. . .”
“Dear Mary,
Today, saw
My quondam Black
Mistress P.I. —
I believe
I made her sorry
For her former ill
Treatment of me.”
The trouble with atonement is it is like
a sphinx, several parts human, several
parts bull, dog, lion, dragon, or bird.
When we are dreaming of atonement, no
matter how subtly, we must remember
we are not dreaming of a verb.
“I watch them work
The tie, tackle,
And lower lift.
The boatswain
Speaks to Bredson
About the score
In one of the strops.
Thomas Creed
Sits with his splicing fids;
Tucks the strands
Of the tack cringle.
His fingers are either
Little mystics or snakes.”
When you dream the dream of square-sail
rigging you are dreaming the dream
that the same side is always before
the wind. At the dawn of Swedish history
it was believed Erik Vädderhatt, the
King of the Svear, could turn the wind
and cruise endlessly. Ships are supposed
to be emblems of transcendental joy. . .
“Do the male slaves
Ever dance
Under these circumstances?”
“After every meal
They are made to jump
In their irons;
But I cannot call it dancing.”
“What is the term
That is usually given to it?”
“It is by the slave dealers
Called dancing.”
“Unclewed the sails.
They too in their shackles
Danced in the wind.”
“Dear Mary,
I watched the land wind
Do to the sails
What it does
To our hair.
I dreamed of dancing
With you
Into the cold water,
Our wet clothes
Like nets and entanglements
Around our desire.”
They would call them up
Two by two, equivocal,
Unmasked,
Making it possible
To be classified
Forever:
Pairs of birds,
Pairs of oxen,
Pairs of sheep,
Reptiles, lions,
Elephants, antediluvian,
Carnivorous, herbivorous,
Fabulous, beautiful,
Ugly, strange,
Cocks, locusts, bears,
Foxes, and even flies,
All of them black;
All of them in colonnade
To the gates of hell.
John did baptize
In the wilderness,
Did call out to Judæa
And Jerusalem
Come lay down
Your life
In the River Jordan,
Participate in his death
And his resurrection.
They said
They were refreshing them,
But the shackles still clanged,
And most of them still stank,
And many finding holes
In the netting
Jumped overboard
And baptized themselves
Bobbing in the adoring
Loins of the sea.
“Dear Mary,
The three greatest blessings
Of which human nature is capable
Are undoubtedly religion,
Liberty and love.”
The shape of a ship’s hull is determined by
the materials, methods of construction,
means of propulsion, use, fashion, and
whim. This is a dream of law and
the minute verities of justice, the eighth
enigma of the tarot.
First part fair,
The latter cloudy,
Winds becoming unusual,
Clouds dark, great lightning. . .
I think of what we’ve done,
My own illumination
Before it is too late:
The palm and needle whippings,
The short splice,
Blackwall hitches,
Sheet bends.
Quickly rummage
The rigging details,
The yardarm blocks,
The tackles.
Recall work
On the pintles,
The rudder head.
Have Billinge
Check barricado and stores,
Especially powder and slaves.
On this day
Of the second voyage
Of The African, 1754,
Weighed,
Bound by God’s permission
To St. Christophers,
We are ready for our justice,
To be winnowed like barley
On the threshing floor.
The great dream of the dark, with the
lonely extroverted lamp, the intuitive ship,
and the wind tossing on the innovative sea
should moor somewhere. “Why is this
so?” asked Kuo Hsi. For in our landscapes
and our seascapes are the personalized items
of our consciousness, the coarse grist
of our imagination, the flirtatious metaphors
stirring our ethics, and the boldly stroked
delineations of our unraveling possibilities
and original nature.
Through the night
We were played with
Like kittens.
The slaves spilled
Out nightmares of themselves
And groans.
We will all
Need dawn’s shawl
This morning.
I hope
She is good to us.
Osiris was slain by Set and put
together again by Isis. John will dream
like this, off and on, and then quit the
sea. This is his last voyage. He will
lose no slaves and no crew, and it will
be called a blessing. At a time like
this the Egyptians would build a
monolith to marry the enigmatic tension
between life and death. John will
change his dreams, now, from the menstrual
dreams of the slaver to the menthol dreams
of the minister. Showing the devastating evil
we do, like a storm, is only a stepping-
stone to something else.
Sing brother.
I will become sermons,
He says,
That understand what I’ve done.
Sing
I will become hymns
Bound in the skin
Of what I’ve done.
I will be patient with Cowper,
Inspiring to Wilberforce
And Wordsworth;
I will attract the awakened crowds,
The abolitionist.
I will stand at the altar.
Sing brother
Dressed in black,
Testifying,
Testifying. . .
I dream I will not be forgiving him
for the timeliness of his innocence, for
betrothing the dead to the dead,
but will be lifting
up my hands to an appetite for life
that will take slavers and slaves with me.
I wish
There was no timelessness,
That slavery was over
And so far away
It was an incredibly mysterious
Jungle —
Somewhere else.
An uncharted river
Canopied by extensive moss —
Somewhere else.
A spectacular ragged
Waterfall
Mystically expressed
Over an enormous
Obsidian wall,
But it is right here
In my pouch, today,
Like the acori beads
I have been swimming with
For hours —
Presidential, prime ministerial,
Corporate, grassroots based.
Right here,
Racist, imperial, and sexist.
Right here,
Woefully spendthrift
And Democratic,
Anally retentive
And Republican,
Militantly inappropriate,
And so good to itself
That it jogs.
Copyright Credit: Primus St. John, “Dreamer” from Communion: Poems 1976-1998. Copyright © 1999 by Primus St. John. Reprinted with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, P.O. Box 271, Port Townshend, WA 98368-0271, coppercanyonpress.org.
Source: Communion: Poems 1976-1998 (Copper Canyon Press, 1999)