Listen
Listen - meaning Summary
Possessive Dreamlike Pursuit
The poem presents a speaker who recounts recurring dreams in which the beloved transforms into lotus, bird, and star to escape. In each vision the speaker pursues and violently reclaims the beloved, combining erotic possession with salvific urgency. The surreal, mythic imagery dramatizes obsessive attachment and the need to possess rather than negotiate absence. Repetition of "listen beloved" frames these confessions as intimate, insistent pleas to be heard and justified.
Read Complete Analyseslisten beloved i dreamed it appeared that you thought to escape me and became a great lily atilt on insolent waters but i was aware of fragrance and i came riding upon a horse of porphyry into the waters i rode down the red horse shrieking from splintering foam caught you clutched you upon my mouth listen beloved i dreamed in my dream you had desire to thwart me and became a little bird and hid in a tree of tall marble from a great way i distinguished singing and i came riding upon a scarlet sunset trampling the night easily from the shocked impossible tower i caught you strained you broke you upon my blood listen beloved i dreamed i thought you would have deceived me and became a star in the kingdom of heaven through day and space i saw you close your eyes and i came riding upon a thousand crimson years arched with agony i reined them in tottering before the throne and as they shied at the automaton moon from the transplendant hand of sombre god i picked you as an apple is picked by the little peasants for their girls
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