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The End

Dreamed 1989 by Graham Greene

In this World of My Own [dreams] I found myself writing a bit of verse for a competition in a magazine called Time and Tide, but, needless to say, the paper never received it. It was about my own death.

From the room next door
The TV talks to me
Of sickness, nettlerash, and herbal tea.
My breath is folded up
Like sheets in lavender.
The end for me
Arrives like nursery tea.

SOURCE: A World of My Own: a Dream Diary by Graham Greene, p.116. I added title; these literally are the last lines of his last book.

EDITOR'S NOTE:

Any literate reader of Greene's generation would hear the echoes here of T.S. Eliot's "This is the way the world ends / not with a bang but a whimper."

But wait! There's more! It's a specific kind of whimper. With that word "nursery", Greene's dream mocks his own old age as infantilizing; from hobnobbing with revolutionaries and world leaders, he's been reduced to spoon-feeding. A TV he can't turn off.

--Chris Wayan


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