Last night I dreamed about Ovid, but I don't know what I was dreaming. Outside my open window the quiet rain was falling, falling; I woke with a crick in my neck and then I was dreaming, tossing, crumpling my pillow, waking, dreaming.

There is a voice in my head that will not be stilled, but I cannot hear it or remember what it says. The voice is like a song with no words or tune; it is like the clicking of an iron stove expanding in the heat; it is like the drumming of a grouse--a dull pulse, endless, an almost-silence.

The rain is falling, falling; and now the light is creeping through the empty maples, the skeletal arms of the birches. Last night I dreamed about Ovid, but I don't know what I was dreaming. I want, I don't want, to invent a tale to replace the truth. I remember nothing, but I could make you believe me.

I could.