In the Dark, Dreaming

In the Dark, Dreaming

By Richard Mather

(Inspired, in part, by John Milton’s Paradise Lost, Book 5: 108-113)

Tonight

I am not in my right mind.

It was the same last night

And the night before.

When at night the conscious mind

Retires to its

Monastic cell, and my senses are

Asleep, the dreaming mind yokes together

Heterogeneous shapes that

Derive from the remembrance of

Things seen in daytime.

And not only that.

It dredges up past deeds, produces

Strange ideas that

Run together in the

Form of a masque or other illusion.

The mind roves

Unchecked, and of its roving there is no end.

Dreaming ties down the will.

Unfree, the will is without reason,

And without reason it cannot be right.

Night-time, blind to common sense

I am lacking

A sufficient reason to see clearly in the dark.

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