Dream of a Lost Friend lyrics

You were dead, but we met, dreaming,
before you had died. Your name, twice,
then you turned pale, unwell. My dear,
my dear must this be? A public building
where I've never been, and on the wall,
an AIDS poster. Your white lips. Help me.

We embraced, standing in a long corridor
which harboured a fierce pain neither of us felt yet.
The words you spoke were frеnzied prayers
to Chemistry; or you laughеd, a child-man's laugh,
innocent, hysterical, out of your skull. It's only
a dream, I heard myself saying, only a bad dream.

Some of our best friends nurture a virus, an idle,
charmed, purposeful enemy, and it dreams
they are dead already. In cool restaurants,
over crudités, the healthy imagine a time
when all these careful moments will be dreamed
and dreamed again. You look well. How do you feel?

Then, as I slept, you backed away from me, crying
and offering a series of dates for lunch, waving.
I missed your funeral, I said, knowing you couldn't hear
at the end of the corridor, thumbs up, acting.
Where there's life ... Awake, alive, for months I think of you
almost hopeful in a bad dream where you were long dead.