There are no means for escaping this world
It penetrates even into your sleep
And is its substance
You are caught in your own dreaming
Where there is no space
And are held forever where there is no time
You can do nothing you are not told to do
There is no hope for escape from this dream
That was never yours
The very words you speak are only its very words
And you talk like a traitor
Under its incessant torture.
There are many who have designs upon this world
And dream of wild and vast reformations
I have heard them talking in their sleep
Of elegant mutations
And cunning annihilations
I have heard them whispering in the corners of crooked houses
And in the alleys and narrow back streets of this crooked creaking universe
Which they, with their new designs, would make straight and sound
But each of these new and ill-conceived designs
Is deranged in its heart
For they see this world as if it were alone and original
And not as only one of countless others
Whose nightmares all proceed
Like a hideous garden grown from a single seed
I have heard these dreamers talking in their sleep
And I stand waiting for them
As at the top of a darkened flight of stairs
They know nothing of me
And none of the secrets of my special plan
While I know every crooked creaking step of theirs.