Nightmares

Nightmares Looking around in an old bookstore -- hissing espresso machine, creaking spiral staircase, sweating pipes in the basement -- we found a drawing; “Parisian Mob Scene -- Late Summer 1792.” Ah, this would make an excellent gift for a poet acquaintance of ours. “Before going to sleep,” he once told an audience, “feast your eyes on a black and white picture of war torn Troy or a 16th century Moroccan fortress; colonial Williamsburg or the Halls of Montezuma, and you will be there, vagabonding across timescapes without luggage and jetlag.” Well, where else would an adventurous poetic soul like to go, if not to the stormy streets of Paris in those fateful times? We had the drawing framed and sent it to him as a token of our appreciation for the dedicated copy of his newly published anthology -- “In the Mouth of the Shark.” The drawing was soon returned. The attached letter explained why. “On the second night after putting your thoughtful gift on the wall, I wound up in a by-gone world where I once must have been. Some nightmares begin as dreams, but this one was terror from the start.” “I was being swept along by a noisy, flag-waving multitude.” “Get out of here without attracting attention! Go home, lock yourself in -- I told myself. There must be something in your face and demeanor that will tell them: The blood of those who served the king gurgles in his veins!” “Commands screeched from the coppery throats of distant military trumpets; then rifle fire. Frozen silence in one minute, beastly furor and fatalistic rage in the next. The scattered will of disorganized individuals coalesced into a singleminded, swelling and rolling deluge, incendiary and stone-hearted. They were looking for a victim, I sensed it. I knew it.” “An old man moving just a few feet away from me stopped, making the group around him, myself included, stop too. He took a penetrating look at me, his face a faithful mirror of a world derailed; banged his chest with both hands and nodded accusingly in my direction.” “A detachment of 19 National Guard soldiers saved me from mob justice. (I still wonder about the significance of the number). They took me to a very old prison; incredibly thick, slanted walls, rats scampering wherever I glanced.” “In the wee hours of the morning of my execution I dreamed in torpor.” “I was back in my ancestral chateau, celebrated for its splendid gardens and known throughout Europe for its glittering soirees. A long, richly laden dinner table glowed under the ardent luminosity of gilded iron candle chandeliers. The women -flowers fastened to their bosoms, redolent of rare perfumes; towering hairdos, ears and necks sparkling with diamonds -- were pure and magnificent. Busy servants crossed each other, carrying plates and ornamented glasses of wine. Soft harmonies coming from a harpsichord and a violoncello made the atmosphere unbearably sweet.” “I was a marquis, God’s gift to the people of Gaul, young, in the full of force of life. Standing in a corner, I sipped my Val-de-Loir from a tulip-shaped crystal glass and watched how my orders to present the highpoint of culinary gratification were carried out. A gigantic cake made to look like a royal crown, complete with jewels of puffed cream, was to be put in the middle of the table.”

“The disparate chatter erupted into exclamations of surprise and appreciation as the pastry masterpiece moved around the mirrored hall. Then unexpected noise and commotion -- screams and belly-laughs. The servant carrying the huge plate fell on the table between two guests, up-ending the cake and unleashing a catastrophe among gold and silver utensils, porcelains and crystals.” “I am going to teach you, you wretched serf, I thought, in inflamed anger. As I began to move toward the quivering servant, I woke up to a bayonet poking my side.” “I mounted the wooden steps to the platform where the razor sharp blade suspended a story high waited to drop on my neck.” “The brook under the dark shade of oak trees, washing the feet of our chateau’s mighty ramparts flashed up before my feverish eyes. Where are my parents? Will no one save me?” “Grabbed by the hair, my severed head was shown around to the jubilant crowd. For a few seconds -- the brain still functioning -- I saw malevolently smiling, savage faces, yellow leaves swirling in the wind; heard pigeons coo. I flew toward cloudlike mountains . . . . woke up in a mass grave filled with decapitated bodies.” “What did William Faulkner say? The past is never dead. It's not even past.” “The plebs in the drawing you gave me wave flags that suggest contemporary French tricolors. But in my nightmare there were real colors and I saw only two vertically arranged fields, one blue and the other red. The white in the middle was missing. It was probably removed because of its religious and royalist significance.” “The past is ever-present, but what about the future?” “As I recuperated, I knew that something bad was on its way. And guess what! The server of my laptop crashed the same morning. The servant falling on the table was the way my mind recognized this future event. I lost all the work of the past few months, including poems I was supposed to submit to a journal -- close to losing your head when you try to eke out a living from literature.” “In the words of T.S. Eliot: ‘. . . time future contained in time past.’ The future is only a kind of past that we can’t recall.” “The poet has the right to be religious in one moment and curse God in the next.” “When I am in a good mood, I believe that the mystery of time is a divine benefaction. When I am in an ice cold, rationalistic disposition, I think it serves as an incentive to push science toward unraveling the Sphinx of temporal flow, making travel to distant planets via wormholes possible, saving mankind from extinction in the distant future. Although our fate is irremediable, postterrestrial longevity may figure in our scripted evolutionary potential.” “But today I feel dejected and have no doubt about being deliberately manipulated and tormented by a couple of evil spirits. Viciousness rules the concealed realm. The great dome of dazzling light ahead is not the Citadel of Human Reason. It is the funnel-shaped opening of the netherworld. Only the fire of companion galaxies burning to extinction lights up the dark universe. Humanity will be swallowed by a black hole -- and soon.” We were back in the bookstore the following Sunday and became captivated by

another drawing. Its title: “The Lewd Lady of Babylon.” We sent it to the poet with sincere apologies for inadvertently turning his peaceful rest into terror. We never saw or heard from him again.