Dream segment involving Claribel
Alegria's Flowers From the Volcano
For Julian Beck
Edvard Munch dreams of iron beds dotting the
landscape
and outside, a woman screams in the night.
Light catches the dull gleam of your eye
as you are torn from sleep
and I feel the coolness of these bars,
cool as rainwater in this torrid place,
he said, and he listens to her vanishing in the
dark.
Your breathing is like footsteps, like cool air. In
what country?
The waters of the trench surround this bed.
This heat. I cannot swim. Will I never see home?
A faint light catches the dull gold on her hand.
In this marriage of darkness and sleep,
the iron bars of the beds grasped
during orgasm, abortion and death
keeps us anchored to the land, Claribel said,
There is no time for children.
It's all the same thing in the end.
The whiteness of her hand clutches the bars like
a silent scream.
No one has ever let go of the hand holding the
dream.
And we dream of our homeland, a place where we've
never been.
Ashes of Izalco in my mouth. My eyes are dreaming.
Fitful sleep ties us to this bed like incomparable
ropes.
He said, We breathe beside each other,
almost, but not quite touching.
almost, but not quite touching.
In this conspiracy of sleep we have committed the
crime
of breathing together. When they arrest us,
they will bind our hands and feet to the iron bars
of this bed.
And we will be lost but they are afraid of what we
are.
What remembered countries,
iron bars placed there for you to hold?
iron bars placed there for you to hold?
What white doves on smooth painted iron?
I'm afraid for you. Will you never stop?
She said, They are stealing our land from us as we sleep.
Bars of the bed grasped by a woman who dreams of
love or prisons—
it is the same thing. In my country, my remembered
country
ashes fall like rain. Yes, they will bind us
and death keeps one anchored to the land.
Each of us sleeps alone—
especially when we sleep together, said Munch.
All that we remember sleeps with us
on the bed where the sheets bind us
like long winters of my northland.
She said, We, on this bed form new islands.
We, on these islands, form a plan of escape.
The bridge between our continents is a kiss.
The iron bars on this bed are a kiss.
The screams in the night—our hands do not touch.
Our breath like footsteps running through the dark
streets,
like a woman pursued, whose scream
hangs like a thread across the abyss.
hangs like a thread across the abyss.
Why are we tied to this? Edvard, I am brushed by my
own silences
and even your strong arms cannot contain the screams
of a woman
We keep our ashes inside the volcano of Izalco.
Pale ashes bloom in the country of the dead, said
Claribel.
Are we silently mouthing this with slack codfish
jaws,
our hanging lips opening and closing like doors
where pools of sleep gush in at high tide?
There is nothing to be said, he said.
We are marooned, stranded on the rocks of this
island
and the chasm keeps us from wandering in this
country.
I can no longer paint, he said.
She said, The only thing tangible—
the only thing we hold, we need to let go of.
and in the letting go, we hold what we need.
We hold our need.
10/5/84
San Francisco Art Institute
Julian Beck Benefit
