Dostoevsky (credit: Vasily Perov, Wikimedia Commons)

Dream

Is any man's best hero ever himself?

The pictures in my head, I touch them up.

The tones can be enhanced by subtle shades.

A feature here obscured or there re-traced

My image of the Hero, against the sky

Could be torn out -- blood-fringed -- but not erased

Not changed in size or posture very much.

A giant form, impassioned, strong ... and such.

Too large to ever fill? By God, no way!

I'll die. I'll burn in Hell before I'll say

I've shrunk my dream to match the everyday.

To live and never dream lives not at all;

It wanders numb, not knowing Awe or Fear.

To dream and never live is to love Death

And be a coward Joy will not come near.

But dream of dreaming, life becomes a song

A rapt, unending, haunting melody

Of rhythm deep, insistent, intricate

And lyric strange, of words and thoughts outlawed

That swell the singer's certainty of God.

                      

                                              Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog

                 (Caspar David Friedrich, via Wikimedia Commons)