The Hero's Return

We dream to know that others are dreaming with us.

When we dream alone, dreams are but a mirror,

And any sane dreamer knows he fools himself,

By pretending that his mirror image is someone else.

That is why people pray only to heroes,

From stories held in common thought. *

With no one to share them with,

Most dreams turns into wastelands.

Without reality to give them gravity,

They suffer the same fate of Mars;

Their atmosphere becomes rarified

Leaving them as cold lifeless deserts;

Until no life can still be found

In their worlds of abstractions.

For with no one to dream with,

There is no one to dream of.

If we are to survive in our wanderings

Every hero(ine) needs someone to give them a thread

To find their way back out of their labyrinth,

Lest we're each consumed by our Minotaur.

For a dreamer is an adventurer, and not a soldier.

We have no homeland to return to;

If anything, all we have to return to

Is our party of fellow adventurers.
I’ve strayed too far to find any companions

In these swamps within the wilderness.

With nothing to give me direction,

I just move on ahead into the fog.

So excuse me from my head,

I have elsewhere to be.

I owe you nothing anymore;

Our ties were severed when I left alone.

This dreamer is no hero,

For I will not come home;

You will never know of what I left changed

In the places you will only find when I'm gone.

* Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet: on Prayer