Sample Sestina About Dreams

The Dream Cavern


In a cavern that chimes with still echoes,

Some no-good hustlers have set up a banquet table.

This and other spaces like it are where dreams

Hang to dry beneath the chatter of darkness,

Holy birds, and snarling wolves.

Whose house do they all go to afterwards?


Which lives will everyone assume afterwards?

The hustlers find partial answers in the echoes

Of the holy birds, but to speak with the wolves,

They slice off their wings and put them on the table.

While feasting, their wet paws arouse a darkness

In the dead holy birds now reduced to dreams.


This place is made from the stuff of dreams,

Where birds go but go nowhere afterwards.

It’s constructed out of the light and darkness

That the world walks through, swimming in echoes,

Dreaming of bread and wine on a table,

Thinking of hustlers and birds and wolves.


Every plant and scrap of meat has been eaten by wolves.

They devour the food of the hustlers’ dreams,

And leave nothing on the table

For anyone to eat afterwards.

In this grey cavern of wolves and echoes,

Nothing is free from the darkness.


Dances arise in the darkness,

The same way songs were buried by wolves

And dug up in the echoes.

All of these things arise and wander in dreams

But lie down afterwards,

After we’ve risen and wandered to the breakfast table.


These thought are brought to the table,

Filled with air, drained of darkness,

Burning with memories of afterwards.

These thoughts are fed to the wolves

Once they’ve escaped from dreams

And resound in the echoes.


Afterwards, forget the holy birds and the wolves,

And the hustlers and the table and the darkness

And the cavern of your dreams—but remember the echoes.

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