"When I kiss my daughter goodnight and wish her sweet dreams, she understands my wish for her is kind, but she knows, as all children do, that it’s impossible to be told by our parents what our dreams are supposed to be like. They know they have to dream themselves out of life and back into it, because life must always win us back."

Deborah Levy | Swimming Home

In the Dream Territory of a Woman

In the dream territory of a woman
light and darkness
merge and unite

In the dream territory of a woman
all things ensue
except for man

In the dream territory of a woman
through the open window
rain enters, and
the breeze teases the curtains

In the dream territory of a woman
night passes on
but never rises the sun; and
there is an endless wait for the morning

Naseer Ahmed Nasir

Dream of the Huntress

It is always the same:
she is standing over me

in the forest clearing,
a dab of blood on her cheek

from a rabbit or a deer.
I am aware of nothing

but my mutinous flesh,
and the traps of desire

sent to test it—
her bare arms, bare

shoulders, her loosened hair,
the hard, high breasts,

and under a belt
of knives and fish-lures,

her undressed wound.
Every night the same:

the slashed fetlock,
the buckling under;

I wake in her body
broken, like a gun.

Robin Robertson

"There are so many stars
that if one or another of them falls
it’s no great loss, since there are thousands left.
But there’s just this one moon up in the sky,
which no one saw fall ever - except in dreams."

Giacomo Leopardi | Canti (via proustitute)

Inspiration by Li Pei Huang

Dreams

Men die…
Dreams only change their houses.
They cannot be lined up against a wall
And quietly buried under ground,
And no more heard of…
However deep the pit and heaped the clay -
Like seedlings of old time
Hooding a sacred rose under the ice cap of the world -
Dreams will to light.

Lola Ridge

Did I dream you dreamed about me? by Manuel Rebollo

Creed

Laugh, laugh at all my dreams!
What I dream shall yet come true!
Laugh at my belief in man,
At my belief in you.

Freedom still my soul demands,
Unbartered for a calf of gold.
For still I do believe in man,
And in his spirit, strong and bold.

And in the future I still believe
Though it be distant, come it will
When nations shall each other bless,
And peace at last the earth shall fill.

Shaul Tchernichovsky

La Casa dei Sogni [The House of Dreams] by Paolo Domeniconi

The Dreamer

He lay within a neat white-sheeted bed,
And stared at distance with his wide young eyes:-
Eyes that held space, had dreams, and saw the spread
Of the huge seas, and saw the stretch of skies;
Watched streets and roofs„ and clouds, and quiet rains:-
Eyes that knew the way each slow wind flies
Through long green lengths of winding country lanes:-
Eyes that held time, and saw all unafraid
Each passing hour
Fall like a sleeping flowers
Against a narrow blade.

Leon Gellert

(Written from a hospital bed in 1915)

In My Dreams

In my dreams I am always saying goodbye and riding away,
Whither and why I know not nor do I care.
And the parting is sweet and the parting over is sweeter,
And sweetest of all is the night and the rushing air.

In my dreams they are always waving their hands and saying goodbye,
And they give me the stirrup cup and I smile as I drink,
I am glad the journey is set, I am glad I am going,
I am glad, I am glad, that my friends don’t know what I think.

Stevie Smith

"At what exact moment did the real turn into the unreal, reality into reverie? Where was the border? Where is the border?"

Milan Kundera - Identity

"Her sleep was a hundred times interrupted and full of dreams that were unpleasant and disjointed, absurd, meaningless, and distressingly erotic. Each time she wakes after such dreams, she feels uneasy. That, she thinks, is one of the secrets of a woman’s life, every woman’s: the nocturnal promiscuity that renders suspect all promises of fidelity, all purity, all innocence."

Milan Kundera - Identity