On the Escape of a Dream (from No Voyage 1963) Trees pull up their polished roots and run; Rivers, if they please, pause in their flight. Birds hover and sing in syllables; Lovers and friends, in curious masks, glide over the lawn. The moon and stars wander the sky with the sun. And I am persuaded how all these familiars, that seem In some awful pressure to speak and fear of telling, Have turned earth into the heart’s empirical city, And hide in gallop and gilt the thread of logic Offered in the rapid illogical lectures of dream .. . I remember traveling in a gingham land: I see the dragon in the dragonfly; I open up the wind-wry fruit and find The paper heart of apples. Only the blood Reads it like sediment, can understand. I remember spectrums flooding my blinkered gaze. I dance with creatures wrapped in dominoes, I marvel the high trees in which, unheeded, In anagrams or arabic, the birds Sing on, sing on the chapters of my days. And when the birds splash in their leaves a...