An Adventure by Louise Gluck

I.

It came to me one night as I was falling asleep 
that I had finished with those amorous adventures 
to which I had long been a slave. Finished with love? 
my heart murmured. To which I responded that many profound discoveries 
awaited us, hoping, at the same time, I would not be asked 
to name them. For I could not name them. But the belief that they existed— 
surely this counted for something? 

2.

The next night brought the same thought, 
this time concerning poetry, and in the nights that followed 
various other passions and sensations were, in the same way, 
set aside forever, and each night my heart 
protested its future, like a small child being deprived of a favorite toy. 
But these farewells, I said, are the way of things. 
And once more I alluded to the vast territory 
opening to us with each valediction. And with that phrase I became 
a glorious knight riding into the setting sun, and my heart 
became the steed underneath me. 

3.

I was, you will understand, entering the kingdom of death,
though why this landscape was so conventional
I could not say. Here, too, the days were very long
while the years were very short. The sun sank over the far mountain.
The stars shone, the moon waxed and waned. Soon
faces from the past appeared to me:
my mother and father, my infant sister; they had not, it seemed,
finished what they had to say, though now
I could hear them because my heart was still. 

4.

At this point, I attained the precipice
but the trail did not, I saw, descend on the other side;
rather, having flattened out, it continued at this altitude
as far as the eye could see, though gradually
the mountain that supported it completely dissolved
so that I found myself riding steadily through the air—
All around, the dead were cheering me on, the joy of finding them
obliterated by the task of responding to them—

5.

As we had all been flesh together,
now we were mist.
As we had been before objects with shadows,
now we were substance without form, like evaporated chemicals.
Neigh, neigh, said my heart,
or perhaps nay, nay—it was hard to know. 

6.

Here the vision ended. I was in my bed, the morning sun
contentedly rising, the feather comforter
mounded in white drifts over my lower body.
You had been with me—
there was a dent in the second pillowcase.
We had escaped from death—
or was this the view from the precipice?