The first night that I slept with you <br />And slept, I dreamt (these lines are true): <br />Now newly married we had moved <br />Into an unkempt house we loved – <br />The rooms were large, the floors of stone, <br />The garden gently overgrown <br />With sunflowers, phlox, and mignonette – <br />All as we would have wished and yet <br />There was a shabby something there <br />Tainting the mild and windless air. <br />Where did it lurk? Alarmed we saw <br />The walls about us held the flaw – <br />They were of plaster, like grey chalk, <br />Porous and dead: it seemed our talk, <br />Our glances, even love, would die <br />With such indifference standing by. <br />Then, scarcely thinking what I did, <br />I chipped the plaster and it slid <br />In easy pieces to the floor; <br />It crumbed cleanly, more and more <br />Fell unresistingly away – <br />And there, beneath that deadening grey, <br />A fresco stood revealed: sky-blue <br />Predominated, for the view <br />Was of an ebullient country scene, <br />The crowning of some pageant queen <br />Whose dress shone blue, and over all <br />The summer sky filled half the wall. <br />And so it was in every room, <br />The plaster’s undistinguished gloom <br />Gave way to dances, festivals, <br />Processions, muted pastorals – <br />And everywhere that spacious blue: <br />I woke, and lying next to you <br />Knew all that I had dreamt was true.<br /><br />Dick Davis<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/uxor-vivamus/
