I dreamed that a poor fellow in a film
Was required to go through the ordeal of a dream
Wherein he must not see much less set foot in
A great room where some terrible event had taken place
Narrative of cold war or middle eastern conflict
His jolly friends watched him and shepherded him
For half a year
Across the city and the football pitch
But in the end could not prevent his exposure

And I watched as my own field of vision
The walls the door the furniture that I could see
Swung open to reveal the blinding white light
As reflected from a bare projector bulb
Through colorless celluloid
Token of annihilation
I shouted an open syllable at the top of my lungs
And then muttered apologies to the beloved
Peaceful beside me

I spoke the formulae of ordinary life
The planning train
The retrospective revision
Such as the jolly friends had used
With the man in the troubled middle east
While he inscribed the text in childish pictographs
But when I tried to decompose the garbled words
They plummeted with thudding banality
For the poor fellow
For me