Don Quixote

"The lost traveller's dream under the hill'
William Blake
You are everywhere, in all dreams present …
The windmill's your cross:
impaled on it
again and again
you ride on
the sacrifice is never
consummated as you journey
forever toward it
this side of mortality
through a mist
of sunlight through
the sparkling haze
of your elderly
youthful courage
galloping the stony ground
as though a grassy
paradisal range springing
with tufted sap
riding waves of grey
sand like a dusty
sprightly seahorse.
In the end your adventure
has only begun when
you are taken and silenced
trapped inside
a room of books.
But the message has escaped
the ship sails
flower inside the bottle
full of the energy
of your passing
and we know you have won
for time cannot end
such winter dreams:
when our eyes are held
in yours they glimpse
deep growing pools
wells of impossibility where
all may drink
bowing to cupped
precarious hope breathe
vanished honour
illusory pride
that knightly vision
of windmills ("Ah Freston,
I knew him well')
cowering into invisibility …
So the sun sets and rises along your walls, the gloom is lit
by firefly, candle and moth playing their games in the solemn dusk
as your shadow laughs and stretches behind the flickering flame
in portly companionable shapes follows you round the room
and is present everywhere in all your dreams …