Was it a dream, or was it memory?
“I do not want the witless rounds of spring
to break this fine enchantment.
The joy unbroken is the lovely thing.”

The poet sees his foolish Muse bestir herself
as if to shake off foolishness. “The sleeping joy,”
he murmurs in her dream, “is best.”

“Then let us drift upon the fire with closed eyes,
pretend our midnight. When we dead awaken
we will find our ecstasy
will break into the maddest of all noons.

“I would avoid the chattering of birds,
the twittering in gid and gaudy wide awake.
Our unicorn is but a gilded ass
adornd by village fools with a single horn
of painted wood.

“Faces too bright, janglings of love too live,
in the candid minds of the redeemed
these do not appear. I do not want
the wantonness of spring
to break my wonder into a spiritless chuckle,
piebald ribaldry of nights and days.”

The poet holds the musing body that he loves,
and, like that glistening lover that Saint Julian knew,
that body has a leprous questioning of his soul.
All lovers, male and female hungers, move
in transformations of the Muse.
The Muse is wide awake.

“The joy awake,” she says,
“is everywhere. You are a wondrous sleeping
in a world of wonders. The braying ass
the fools have painted gold and red
and decorated with a single horn
—I saw him in my dream and dreamt
he was a magic wonder. Now awake
I see he is a braying foolish unicorn.”

The Muse, amused,
awakens the fearful poet to her dream.