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Poem of the Week

Robert Bringhurst is a Canadian poet, typographer, and author whose books include Selected Poems (Copper Canyon Press, 2012), Everywhere Being Is Dancing, and Ursa Major. His book The Elements of Typographic Style is considered one of the most influential references on typography and book design available. Bringhurst has a strong interest in linguistics and has translated work from classical Greek, Arabic, Navajo, and Haida. Named an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2013, he lives on Quadra Island in British Columbia with his wife.

Photograph by Kay Amert.

The Heart Is Oil

by Robert Bringhurst
If a man see himself in a dream seeing his face in a mirror, beware: it means another wife.

—Papyrus Chester Beatty III, British Museum (Thebes,
    nineteenth dynasty)

If a man should dream and should see himself dreaming
a dream, seeing himself in a mirror
seeing that the heart is oil riding
the blood like an eyelid toward which he is moving,
his bones like a boat and his gut strung up
for a sail in the wind of his breathing,

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