Dreams of the Half-Light

Today is a strange day for me.

My grandma, who is recovering in hospital from a serious fall, has just had another this morning.

Her life seems to be closing in around her, until she can’t escape the hospital, which she loathes, because she is trapped inside her failing body, which is brittle with age.

It makes me think of my other grandma, whom I called Nanna. She died over a decade ago, but she was still riding her stationary bike in front of the TV soaps up until the day she had a heart attack.

Both woman are so strong, even now that one is fading and the other is gone.

When I think of women speaking out, of self-discipline, of sacrifice, of pure goodness and spirituality, they gather close, as if they are within arm’s reach.

So on this strange day, I want to share a part of them.

In it is a poem from one of my university text books, but I barely looked at until my Nanna recited it to me only a year before her death.

When she said it, it became as tangible as a prayer and though my memory is a poor and abused thing, I knew it immediately and never forgot a word.

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,

Enwrought with golden and silver light,

The blue and the dim and the dark cloths

Of night and light and the half-light,

I would spread the cloths under your feet:

But I, being poor, have only my dreams;

I have spread my dreams under your feet;

Tread softly, because you tread on my dreams.

WB Yeats, “He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven”

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