February 22: Bad Dreams, Billy Collins, "Scenes from Hell"

I had a dream last night.  Problem is, I never remember my dreams.  All I can recall is that I woke up in a cold sweat.  Terrified.  It took me a long time to fall back asleep.

When I was a kid, I used to have dreams about Hell.  I think they were fueled by my Catholic upbringing.  Terrible visions about lakes of molten lead.  Unquenchable hunger and thirst.  Demons.  All the usual cliches.  They kept me awake at night.

And then I took a class in Dante as a graduate student.  During that semester, those dreams returned.  Almost every night.  The lake of ice in the Ninth Circle.  Ugolino gnawing on his son's head.  Lovers in a torrent of wind, never able to touch.

I don't know if I dreamed about Hell last night.  It could have been the poem I read just before I went to sleep.  Billy Collins' visions of Hell.  It's terrifying.

Saint Marty needs to start reading something a little lighter before bedtime.  Something like William Peter Blatty's The Exorcist.

Scenes from Hell

by:  Billy Collins

We did not have the benefit of a guide,
no crone to lead us off the common path,
no ancient to point the way with a staff,

but there were badlands to cross,
rivers of fire and blackened peaks,
and eventually we could look down and see

the jeweler running around a gold ring,
the boss trapped in an hour glass,
the baker buried up to his eyes in flour,

the banker plummeting on a coin,
the teacher disappearing into a blackboard,
and the grocer silent under a pyramid of vegetables.

We saw the pilot nose-diving
and the whore impaled on a bedpost,
the pharmacist wandering in a stupor

and the child with toy wheels for legs.
You pointed to the soldier
who was dancing with his empty uniform

and I remarked on the blind tourist.
But what truly caught our attention
was the scene in the long mirror of ice:

you lighting the wick on your head,
me blowing on the final spark,
and our children trying to crawl away from their eggshells.