The boy had an odd dream on Christmas Eve.
He was floating above the town in the old hall clock,
now changed into a boat. The moon was up.
A being like himself sat at his side.

His house left far behind, the objects in it
took on with distance strange lives of their own,
secretive and severe. He sensed them there,
holding among themselves dark conversation.

Now there were fields below him, cloaked in white,
with here and there a barn or naked tree.
In burrows deep beneath the snow, he knew,
the speechless animals were warmly bundled.

His double waved a hand, and all at once
the sun blazed out full strength and the world was changed!
A tropic greenness overspread the land,
dotted with fruit trees and bright-blooming flowers.

Behind the beauty, though, a malice lurked—
a hint, it seemed to him, of something shrouded,
not yet revealed, but charged with pain and l ...

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