Childhood Dreams Poem by Milton Johanides

I don´t know when the dreams made me dangerous
But they did
And I remember many things which may or may not have happened
An old man´s face peering
Down at me over the rail of my cot
A queue of people
In a sky alive with light
My mother´s breast on my lips
While I swallowed
The pale glow from the window at the back of the room
Like a mirror from another world
Where philosophers sit
And warriors learn their wars
And scientists their language quirks.
Once I asked Socrates if he could
Relate the one law that governed all the rest
And he said
“Sometimes, my boy, it´s good to scream.”