​Under a Cloak, Dreaming, by Basil Meyer

​Under a Cloak, Dreaming

after Pio Abad's I am Singing a Song that Can Only Be Borne After Losing a Country, 2023, seen in the Ashmolean Museum.

In a place where things come to die
when they have drifted to the edge,
lies a roanoke deer skin mantle.
The people are gone, their language is dead.

In blood-red pencil an exile draws a map
of destruction, of a land washed away
in a flood, now only the ghost of a place.
Look beneath and below, see, there's

something behind, the map's other side
is a gleaming cowrie mirror made
by a people who didn't make mirrors.
A pearly view of the world, with a man

at its centre, a wolf, a white tailed deer
and the people. In this vision man
and wolf are brothers, both hunt the deer.
We honour the wolf for his cunning, 

his skill and his pack. This makes him
our brother. We do not eat the wolf.
Now think of the mirror from the flesh side,
remember that wolves too have dreams

When they dream, they dream they are running
through the forest chasing the deer.
They dream of how you can smell deer
in the mist, they dream of the blood side of skin.

And if you look closely, you'll see
the wolf's leg twitching, while it sleeps, chasing deer.
When the wolf wakes, it is hungry and hunts.
We know deer dream of flight

of sun-dappled glades, the taste
of spring growth in the clearing, their herds.
Men dream of many things, porcupines,
bison, heron, the salmon, their wives.

But the white men, who came from the ocean,
what do they dream of?
They, like all men, dream of deer
and in dreams they are wolves.

In their dreams they chase deer in the mist
and they hear them fleeing ahead
and they smell them, but for
some reason, these dream-deer smell like men.

In the mist they cannot see them, but they chase.
And in their dreams the pack of white wolves
bring down their prey, tear their quarry asunder.
In the frenzy they notice that the deer

taste like men, but flesh is flesh
and wolf will eat wolf so long as
they are starving and the dinner is not of their pack.
So they eat these dream-deer anyway.

Exiles and the dead know that dreams,
in the colour of blood, are the nightmares
of what others call history.

Basil Meyer
​
Basil Meyer was born outside Johannesburg in South Africa. He studied in Johannesburg, Leeds and London, completing doctoral work on narrative and death in Victorian medicine and literature. He has published poetry in Contrast, Presence and Green Dragon, as well as reviews and criticism. He has worked as an English lecturer in South Africa and various UK universities and most recently in hospital administration. He is interested in the intersections between poetry and other forms of knowledge, discourse and artistic practice. He currently lives in England.