Thursday, November 25, 2010

Le rêve a laissé son manteau


On my last night at l'Hameau de l'Etoile, the refurbished 17th century village in the south of France where I have been leading new adventures in Active Dreaming, I dreamed I was leading the group on a spiral dance through stables where powerful horses stamped and snorted their approval. As we danced, I improvised the words of a song with alternating verses in French and English. As I woke, the title of this dream was with me: "Le chanson des écuries du rêve" - "The Song of the Dream Stables."
I sat down with a cup of coffee to write with the energy of this dream. What came streaming through me was not exactly the Song of the Dream Stables but rather a poem in the rhythms of Charles d'Orléans, the poet-prince of medieval France who has featured in my dreams for manyyears. It was a sequence of dreams, visions and synchronicity - extraordinary even by my standards - that brought me to France in 2005 to lead a previous workshop at a chateau near Blois, the city Charles most loved, and where his body lies under the protection of the most fearsome gargoyles I have ever seen. The repeating line in my poem is borrowed from one of Charle's lyrical poems. Le temps a laissé son manteau.

Here is the poem as I delivered it to the group, in French, the day before I flew home for Thanksgiving:

Le rêve a laissé son manteau
de brume, de soie et du regret
Je marche entre la terre et l’eau
pour nettoyer
à castanet

La lune m’a donné sa pleine face
J’encontre esprits de là-haut
Je dois assigner chacun
à sa place
Le rêve a laissé son manteau

Les vents racontes légendes d’or
je glisse comme grue, je mange taureau
Je vive entre la mort et l’amour
Le rêve a laissé son manteau


A rough translation:

      The dream has dropped its mantle of mist, of silk and of regret I walk between earth and water to cleanse with their percussive beat

      The moon has given me her full face I have met spirits that come from there I must assign each to its rightful place The dream has dropped it mantleT

      The winds narrate golden legends I glide as the crane, I eat the bull I live between love and Death The dream has dropped its mantle.

     "Eating the bull" is no bull. Taureau is a preferred dish of the gardian, the cowboy of the Camargue, and I ate steak de taureau au fleur de sel in a restaurant named the House of the Moon Bull (Casa Toro Luna) on the square in the medieval town of Aigues Mortes.

      Graphic: Illumination from an early collection of poems of Charles d'Orléans, depicting his time as a hostage in the Tower of London.

8 comments:

  1. You are truly blessed by the God of Dreams in your travels and excursions into the imaginal realm of the countries you visit. The poem is magnificent; I look forward to more of the adventures of your French dreaming. Because I know that a spiral dance through dream stables is just the beginning. The dream dropping its mantel and allowing full vision is an image I can carry with me as my own cloak of dreams!

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  2. That poem is no bull either, Robert! I'd order those wonderfully lyrical rhythms over taureau steak, but that might just be me :-). Sounds like the winds of inspiration were blowing in along with the mistral... I look forward to hearing more of your travel reports, from both worlds and between!

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  3. Les vent racontes legendes d'or. Oh that we would all listen to the winds for the golden legends that are being sung and whispered. Thank you for being a storyteller, a dreamer, who fathoms the golden legends and tells the stories.

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  4. You live a charmed life; charmed and charming. I can only imagine the power of being in such a medieval town, eating taureau steak awash in the energies and magic of such a place. Thank you for carrying me there through your words and images.

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  5. Great poem, thank you for sharing! I love your books and I try to figure out my dreams, but it's still all Greek to me... :) I'm reading Dream Gates now and enjoying every minute.

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  6. This may be a little off topic from your French travels but I am curious about iroquois water drums for some reason perhaps with a A'nó:wara turtle design.

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  7. Wanda, Savannah, Carol, Jeni, Maria - Merci beaucoup! Yes, I'll be following this spiral dance and writing more from my travels (past and future) in France. étreintes de l'ours [bear hugs] à vous tous.

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  8. PS As some of you know, I am also posting narratives from my recent adventures in southern France at my beliefnet blog. Here's the link for an interesting episode of dream archeology: http://blog.beliefnet.com/dreamgates/2010/11/dream-archeology-in-southern-france.html

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