Life is a Dream

This life is nothing but a dream.
I cannot see the far side of the stream.

Life is a frenzy, a fiction, a story,
sometimes a romance filled with glory,
often a nightmare, bloody and gory.

We seek for answers, no confusion,
but all of our life is an  illusion.

We are but shadows in Plato’s Cave:
reality is what we crave,
but all we get is an early grave.

I’m not the first person who has said it,
but I’d love to take full credit.

Comment:  So many things here. My photo of Jan Hull’s carving that adorns my web page. It is carved in stone, Old Welsh red sandstone, unlike these ephemeral words. Thank you Jan. It links to Segismundo’s soliloquy from Calderón de la Barca’s La Vida es Sueño. I have adapted that piece to the current pandemic because Spain has instructed its people to wash their hands in time with this soliloquy.

¿Qué es la vida? Un frenesí.
¿Qué es la vida? Una ilusión,
una sombra, una ficción,
y el mayor bien es pequeño,
porque toda la vida es un sueño,
y los sueños, sueños son.

What is life? A frenzy.
What is life? An illusion,
a shadow, a fiction,
and the greatest good is small,
because life is a dream,
and dreams are nothing
but dreams, after all.