I’m just shorter than Niagara Falls
So I can’t quite touch the sun

If it weren’t so
I would have seized hold
To hurl it far away
So far it would pass August
To where the autumn looms

I would then loosen it from my fingers
To play with the seasons
So rain could fall hard on the Nevada desert
Or so I could sunbathe in Alaska

The hand
That grasped the sun
Wasn’t my hand

My dreams are more modest than that
So I didn’t notice life slip by to old age
Nor the boy who was never young
Nor the angels that follow in my tracks
I was bound for hell
Didn’t see life leap to my shoulders
I fraternise with the dead
Didn’t notice the blind who light my way
To heaven
I lost the way

My dreams were always vague
As if I were the heroes
Who jump secretly from my sleep to weave other lives. They build nests and fill them with offspring. They march in demonstrations with workers. They bear leaders on their shoulders and place bets on horses. They chant the national anthem. Some of them go to jail and some of them toss the revolution out of the window. Some of them go to heaven and others, hell.

When
I wake
They demand self-rule
Other heroes jump from their sleep
With other dreams
Unclear
And very dense
Like Karl Marx’s beard.