Dream-fate

You showed me tonight the rooms again;
everything the same. It was again the first time
among a thousand others that I saw them.
You were still Mrs. and I Mr.

We stood where we later would live.
Nothing had yet passed between us.
This is how it remained for a time
and after this your first name came up.

In this death-sleep I've been able to return
by giving out other addresses
and going away before I wake up.

Then I was now perhaps a salesman
or I stayed with my father in the village
and married later an ordinary woman.

But now that I'm awake it is about
what wobbled on that threshold and wished
and that fate did not grant me but one step.