Dreamwood

(After Adrienne Rich)

In the fallen trees of the darkest forest
there is a garden filled with sweetest fruits
or the most fragrant flowers,
a solitude when she should be in company
the last report of the closing day. If this were a home,
she thinks, a shelter from the storm
because she might be lonely, it shows
dreams fading into clouds
here and there a sign of forgetfulness -
and one possible remembrance. If this were a home
it would be the Tower of Babel,
not a sanctuary but a dream gone bad
on the dunes. It would be the ambition
she could abandon without regret,
of distances ignored,
by which she would recognise that the garden
is not the place she sought, or thought it was
why it must be. If this very Eden
spun from the cloth of excess,
beautiful yet vapid, being here now,
is what is yet a trap unnatural,
so rich, so wasteful,
she thinks, the sterile and corrupt dream can join
and that is the end and that is the truth.