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The Saturday poem: Bad Dream

Written By Unknown on Saturday, April 5, 2014 | 3:05 AM

by David Constantine

There was a path, the familiar path, the one

I've very often not yet ventured on

Around a mountainside, cut level, a sheer

Fall right, a sheer wall left, a ledge a pair

Might amble hand in hand on round the contour

And there you were, not you, nearest the wall

And there was I, not I, nearest the fall

And you were your age but the hair was wrong

I looked like me but many years too young

And on a bend where this path swung out of view

I, less and less myself, halted with the almost you,

And on the brink, for fun or she dared him to,

He balanced his arms dead level and stood there

On his left foot and over the empty air

Raised level his right and so he stood

Lean steady spirit level of my blood

Over emptiness. You laughed, the pair of you

And laughing hand in hand passed out of view.

On hands and knees, the ledge very narrow now,

I shouted after us, your name, my own.

Yours fled my lips to claim you, like a swallow.

Mine fell between my cold hands, like a stone.


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