a poem Kalindi sent me

Here's a poem by Poe which has huge emotional resonance for me. Sometimes only one line is quoted from it: "Is all that we see or seem, just a dream within a dream?" But the whole thing is damn good.

The resonance comes from it's being attached to a suicide note addressed to me, by someone I loved very much named Kalindi Smith. She sought me out on the internet one day because she saw we had a mutual interest in lucid dreaming. We had a strange and intense relationship for two years before she died, and a fair amount of that revolved around our shared interest in lucid dreaming. She died over four years ago, and although by now I have long since "recovered" (as much as you can in a situtation like that), I still think of her many times a day. This poem, which I encounter occasionally, is so wistful and poignant for me.

A Dream Within A Dream - Edgar Allan Poe

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow--
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand--
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep--while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

How I wish I could have saved her; what I wouldn't give to have her back. "O God! can I not save/
One from the pitiless wave?"

arthur