Night Journey

To Joseph Brodsky, for the Light he brought and To Elizaveta, for the Light she brings I spent the whole night searching for you within the four walls of Sleep. I was able to push against one of those burnished ebony walls, and my body gently floated above the bottomless floor of Sleep. Although my eyes were closed, I saw clearly every object clinging to its own corridor of nightspace, fearful all the time that pieces of daylight would loosen its grip and it would fall and fall down the vast vertical length of night... I searched the eight chambers of Sleep, avoiding only the fourth because I was warned. In two chambers I sensed your recent presence: there was a trace of the color YELLOW in the still air of the second chamber, and I caught just the closing measure of Walter's PRIZE SONG piercing the racket of the third. Despite the awesome sobriety of this realm of darkness, those colors and sounds intoxicated me. My resolve was as tight as a stretched bow, and the arrow of expectation was released. It showed me my path to the fifth chamber. No longer able to float freely, my eyes now opened to the ambiguous motions of night air, I climbed the high plateau of this fifth chamber. It was an exhausted man who reached the top. Had you been there - How I strained my sight to catch a glimpse of you! - you would have seen a weary, sweating, hunched figure, animated only by desire. But you were not there, and I perceived not the slightest trace of you to reward my climb. If this was a message to me to abandon my quest, to give up my desire as a sweet cheat - The greatest effort achieving the least result - I scoff at those malign creatures who trick us for their sport. (My heart is a harbor for desire.) I slid down the opposite slope into the sloshy ground between chambers six and seven. In the turgid air, I saw our spiritual rival MELATRON. Even in his disgrace, his beauty of form and features is startling. He knows me well enough, as he knows you and all the others who labor out of desire and hope. But he pretends to know nothing of our virtue, and acknowledges only those who stoop to beg for his unholy help. Your image held fast in my heart, and I left him in his regal solitude. I arrived at the hinterlands of the eighth chamber and witnessed a dire sight: a burning lake or river sent columns of fire into a blank sky, sucking up all breathable air. I knew my journey was over, my quest for you once again frustrated... But do not be sad for me: every step I take brings me closer to you, and in time you too will take a night journey towards me. We may, on one of those nights which stretch before us without end, cross paths in a paroxysm of joy!