The Poetry of Dreams (2) The Sestina Symphony

The Portal of Thought - Doors, by Sylvia Pekarek

The genesis of dream is in the day
Before, the stuff we know as residue.
For Freud was never inattentive to
The casual phrase, the gems of the mundane
(Such as receipts I turned to poetry)
Where life is mostly lived and dream is found.

The doors as ‘invites’ to what may be found –
These stretch into infinities of day.
The dream has opened them like poetry
Which says so much more than its residue
Of words – the ghostly, timid and mundane
Have wondered long when we were coming to.

The irony – the ghost itself seeks to
Escape the room, inside of which it’s found
Itself becoming pale, as if mundane
Were its eternal, unforgiving day.
It is personifying residue.
It is the life that gives us poetry.

It is another brand of poetry –
The sex and the aggression leaning to
The secret wind inside the residue.
Oh, how we know they will in time be found.
They have a way of making night of day.
Their consummation is in the mundane.

The dream is quite a genius with mundane –
The Freudian trio can be poetry
Of battle worn and sadly, tattered day.
The unacceptable is walking to
The door and banking on the symbols found
Acceptable as common residue.

But victory of dream in residue
Is never fully won, despite mundane
And ingenuity and goodness found.
Sometimes we dream of florid poetry –
There is no metaphor for dropping to
And burning from the torrid red of day.

Still, residue emerges from mundane.
The dream is found and known in poetry.
There is a turning to – and from – the day.

The Poetry of Dreams (Part 2) - The Sestina Symphony © Ron Villejo

The Sestina Symphony is my poetic treatise on dreams. I draw on Freudian theory, because the insights that came out of his seminal study “The Interpretation of Dreams” is nothing short of tectonic. But besides this, it is Sylvia’s painting that holds compelling meaning. I use my psychological insight and poetic license to draw it all out as best as I can.

A sestina is a wonderfully complex structure. It was invented by Arnaut Daniel, a French troubadour, in the late 12th century. There is no rhyming here, but, as you see, the same six words that end each line are repeated from stanza to stanza. They are repeated in a very specific order, which is what’s challenging – but, you know, I love a challenge! As I began to write this part, I knew fairly quickly that it had to be written in a sestina to mirror the complexity of this subject.