I HAVE DREAMS OF BEAUTY

I have dreams of beauty,
small purity,
I do not wish to protest.

Perhaps we are travelling and have
fallen unexpectedly in love
as well with green grasses
and small fortress walls,
inexplicable objects.

Perhaps I am a woman
risen from my bed
to greet windblown curtains
windblown from the
unexplained external world.

I shall not protest, so do not
to me.
In Li Po’s poem
you came riding a bamboo horse
and threw green plums near my bed.

Perhaps I saw green plums
in a dream of beauty.

1970