To my alarm clock its lesson I set

for next morning, and into the darkness

I release my bedroom like a balloon,

and step into sleep with relief.

Then, in sleep itself, I’m possessed by a sort

of subordinate drowsiness. Dimly

I see a round table. I cannot make out

those sitting at it. We’re all waiting for somebody.

One of the guests has a pocket flashlight

that he trains on the door, like a pistol;

and higher in stature, and brighter in face

a dead friend of mine enters, laughing.

Without any astonishment I talk to him,

now alive, and I feel there is no deception.

The once mortal wound has gone from his brow

as if it had been some light make-up.

We talk, I feel gay. Then, suddenly,

there’s a falter, an odd embarrassment.

My friend leads me aside

and whispers something in explanation.

But I do not hear. A long-ringing bell

summons to the performance:

the alarm clock repeats its lesson

and daylight breaks through my eyelids.

Looking, just for one moment, of the wrong shape,

the world lands catlike, on all

its four feet at once, and now stands

familiar both to the mind and the eye.

But, good Lord—when by chance the dream is recalled

during the day, in somebody’s drawing room,

or when in a flash it comes back to one

in front of a gunsmith’s window—

how grateful one is to unearthly powers

that the dead can appear in one’s sleep,

how proud of the dream, of that nighttime event,

is one’s shaken soul!