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68 - I, Mary MacLane by Mary MacLane · I, Mary MacLane

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  Speaker 1: Chapter sixty eight of I Mary mc lean by Mary
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  Speaker 1: mc lean. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain.
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  Speaker 1: Recording by Lynne Thompson, Chapter sixty eight, Late afternoon to Morrow.
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  Speaker 1: Last night, as I slept, I dreamed a vivid dream.
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  Speaker 1: I dreamed it was late afternoon, and I was locked
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  Speaker 1: in a condemned cell, sentenced to die. I would be
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  Speaker 1: led out and hanged on the gallows the following morning.
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  Speaker 1: At daybreak, I dreamed I sat beneath a narrow window
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  Speaker 1: in the cell, through which shone the light of the
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  Speaker 1: waning afternoon. The light was very pale, as of sunshine
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  Speaker 1: long dead. I dreamed. I held on my knees a
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  Speaker 1: small block of paper which had a half inch blue
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  Speaker 1: border at the top to mark a perforation. And in
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  Speaker 1: my hand I had a red pencil, And I dreamed
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  Speaker 1: I had cheated the gallows and was writing a little
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  Speaker 1: balladebain It in sudden rhymes and rhythms quite alien to
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  Speaker 1: my waking forms. When I awoke, the song was still
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  Speaker 1: beating time in my brain, and with my black awake
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  Speaker 1: time pencil, I wrote, except for two words, the rhine title,
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  Speaker 1: and all As I dreamed late afternoon they'll think, when
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  Speaker 1: I passed through that door to morrow in the dawn,
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  Speaker 1: I'll then be going to my death. It's I've already gone.
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  Speaker 1: They'll watch me walk serenely out, still nerved and somber eyed,
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  Speaker 1: so strong, they'll say, to meet her death. To day
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  Speaker 1: it is I died. There'll be my pulses, quick with life,
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  Speaker 1: my white sweet throat, my breath, but flesh and bone
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  Speaker 1: are all will hang. This noon I met my death.
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  Speaker 1: For days, I charmidly dwelt on death. I raved at death.
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  Speaker 1: I swore till vexedly. Death waved the day eight and
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  Speaker 1: came this day before. From being lured with artful thoughts,
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  Speaker 1: my life abortive, grew from being broached in livid mood.
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  Speaker 1: My death aborted too. To morrow they'll remark, my calm,
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  Speaker 1: no fuss, no fright, no swoon. They'll kill a wench
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  Speaker 1: to morrow dawn was dead to day at noon. Three
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  Speaker 1: oddnesses are in that dream. That it is true to
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  Speaker 1: life in that I, in my lightning Merry mc cleanness,
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  Speaker 1: would manage to cheat a gallows. That it is untrue
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  Speaker 1: to life in that instead of writing of it in
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  Speaker 1: the true twilight poetry of my own sufficient prose, I
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  Speaker 1: wrote it in the shallow trick phrasing of Rimee, A
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  Speaker 1: little serenade to the gibbet, that it catches and holds
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  Speaker 1: my shadow self, who lives not inside me but beside me,
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  Speaker 1: the resembling dissembling shadow I cast. When I stand between
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  Speaker 1: the daylights of the actual world and the quivering films
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  Speaker 1: of the region of dreams, my own mysteries thrive apace.
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  Speaker 1: They are poetry and beauty and loveliness. Yet they bruise
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  Speaker 1: and batter me and split me to atoms withal are
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  Speaker 1: terrifyingly superfluous. They violently kill the wench to morrow Dawn,
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  Speaker 1: who died restfully to day at noon, end of chapter
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  Speaker 1: sixty eight,