Dreams swept down
Through the dale-deep village,
Seeking the sockets of sleeping
Minds and restless feet,
The muscles of the dreams
Are deep, but their feathers
Flowing over yeomen
Who kept their watch
With tired eyes
Are light.
A flock of omens,
A snoring of speech,
Like snake-throated
Cloud-birds hunting in pairs,
Reaching with blood
On their talons for
The granules of sight,
As rain falls from the loft
The grains plummet and
Nourish fertile fields,
Unobserved, unfelt,
Where mattocks tilled and
Machinery harrowed,
As sparrowhawks strafe
The wakes of mice,
So too the roots of
Their subconsciousness
Received the seeds
Of food, for sustenance.
I also encountered those
Dreams sheltered within
Other dreams,
Like a pregnant horse
Safe in waning hays
And felt-ceilinged stable,
You slept in the folds
And the hairs of a mare,
While I lay awake
In dark latent aches of
The baleful foal.
Seven Hundred Jisei 