NOT  SEEN  TO  SIGHT

Her skin was still translucent pink

But carried now, not seen to sight,

Yet present, bruises - born of grief

And shadow. Sore and tired, touch,

A brush against her shoulder, hurt.

Within inward gaze she gave herself

All the space for this. An ache

of such proportion, anything less

Than love, could not begin to bear

The burden or the joy of it.

Text: Jasmine Lamb                     Illustration: Rosy Lamb                      15.11.2008

A DREAM WITHIN A DREAM

Take this kiss upon the brow !

And, in parting from you now,

Thus much let me avow --

You are not wrong, to deem

That my days have been a dream.

Yet if Hope has flown away

In a night, or in a day

In a vision, or in none,

Is it therefore the less gone ?

All that we see or seem

Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar

of a surf-tormented shore,

And I hold within my hand

Grains of the golden sand --

How few ! Yet how they creep

Through my fingers to the deep,

While I weep - while I weep !

Oh, God ! Can I not grisp

Them with a tighter clasp ?

Oh, God ! Can I not safe

One from the pitiless wove ?

Is all that we see or seem

But a dream within a dream ?

 

Text: Edgar Allan Poe              Illustration: Felix Labisse         14.11.2008

In my sky at Twilight

In my sky at twilight you are like a cloud

and your form and color are the way I love them.

You are mine, mine, woman with sweet lips

and in your life my infinitive dreams live.

The lamp of my soul dyes your feet,

My sour wine is sweeter on your lips,

oh reaper of my evening song,

how solitary dreams believe you to be mine !

You are mine, mine, I go shouting it to the afternoon's

wind, and the wind hauls on my widowed voice.

Huntress of the depths of my eyes, you plunder

stills your noctural regard as though it were water.

You are taken in the net of my music, my love,

and my nets of music are wide as the sky.

My soul is born on the shore of your eyes of mourning.

In your eyes of mourning the land of dreams begins.

Text: Pablo Neruda                                     Illustration: Paul Delvaux                       13.11.2008