Dreamwake Poem by David Lewis Paget

‘I've never felt quite so tired as this, '
I think, when I climb the stair,
It's almost as if there's a drug in wait
When I get to the room, up there,
My eyelids battle to stay apart
They act like blinds on my eyes,
My mind, it fades like a feeble heart
And I live in a world of lies.

But then I wake as I fall asleep
It's a different world out there,
Beyond the billows of eiderdowns,
Of pillows and deep despair,
I see approaching a sailing ship
Its top gallants wrought in gold,
The breeze is driving it in reverse
And the Southern Ocean's cold.

While I am floating above the seas
Above the breakers and spray,
Floating high up above the breeze
Like a long lost castaway,
The sun, it nestles behind a cloud
And it casts its shadow far,
The sailors call in their dream-sleep all,
‘We don't know where we are! '

I couldn't care where I am, it seems,
I'm happy drifting away,
I'd rather my life was spent in dreams
Than lost in some grim dismay,
For Erika comes to visit me
But only when I'm asleep,
She lives on another balcony
And we try to keep it discreet.

She never waves when I pass her by
She doesn't acknowledge me,
I think it's on account of the guy
Who's guarding her, jealously.
But late at night, asleep and a-dream
She comes to my hiding place,
And says, ‘One day, you know what I mean…'
I'm so in love with her grace.

Then I awake in a darkened room
With the skies grey overall,
Back to a life of unleavened gloom,
Where I spend each day appalled,
For people haunting my stair are ghosts
As they pass me by in the stream,
I wave them away from my sailing ship,
They have no part in my dream.

3 February 2016