Written in 1973 and sometimes referred to as just "ISHBI", this work was the only piece read by all five character in the poet's 1979 staging of his works at a festival at West Virginia University.
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lying in fields of orchids, I dream of roses.
there is not...there will not be...
there can not be enough time to taste
all the wines. I should have been immortal.
the wind blows warm when I crave the ice.
the pie is cut. but I want no slice
of it...yet the cake I need
has been served all around.
I have sailed the sun and touched the moon and
fallen to earth in death's calling...but where
are the ancients...I must know. I will go to see
their tombs...for I am too late
(or they passed too soon).
theirs' will be my destiny, too...to dream
of fires that shall not burn in my earthtime...
to carve my name on a sapling and not live to see
the process spread my words to gargantuan proportions...
yet, security beckons. there is
a sort of pleasure in knowing that
death waits around a farther hill, and that
you will be blessed by its frostbound visitation.
but I should have been. I could have been. I would
have been immortal. there just isn't enough
time for the roses.
William F. DeVault. all rights reserved.