82.

This dream knows no decency:

it embarrasses my waking self, serving

up all that sickens me about myself

and others, the sullied obfuscation

of the lesh, the concupiscence of the soul,

the confusion of the faculties. The mud

lies neck-deep, and the silence of terror

seeps long after the crimes. This dream

is what might be as if it were: the sweat

stains the sheets. What kills me by inches

is that as I walk now I almost know

that in these fields whatever the worst

I could imagine, asleep or awake,

could not measure beside what was

in the pathology of a time we call history.