Traum Narrative

What’s the raw material here, really?
The phrases or the experiences?
It’s not like dreams where you experience
Something that you didn’t experience,
And it’s not as if you approach a cliff,
An upthrust slab of language, ages old,
With a trowel or a backhoe and dig in.

The raw material is the unknown—
No, not the fancy, ominous unknown,
The tremulous mysteries and all that—
Just this small square of unknown on the floor,
Afternoon sun on unswept detritus
That will have to become something that was
Or almost was but now is almost raw.