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The white deer

From what country ballad of green England,
from what Persian lamina, from what arcane region
of the nights and days our yesterday keeps
came the white deer I dreamed this morning?
It lasted one second. I saw it cross the meadow
and vanish in the gold of an illusory evening,
slight creature made of a little bit of memory
and a little bit of oblivion, deer just one-sided.
The numen that rule this curious world
allowed me to dream you but not to be your master;
perhaps at a bend of the profound not-yet-unfurled,
white deer of a dream, I shall meet you once again.
I too am a fugitive dream that abides
some days more than the dream of meadow and whiteness.