(the Dream of the Minotaur)

Over all our labyrinths, the sun still rises —I comforted myself so in a dream in
which I wandered through the long, damp corridors of some underground hospital. The
sound of dripping IVs mingled with bedtime tales about heroes killing monsters with
their axes.
Balls of yarn unraveled from old sweaters, rolling down the corridors.
“After hollow quarrels, peace returns like a blackbird to a willow” – said an aging
nurse whose shift would end in an hour or two.
In my dream, I was put to sleep with a bullfighter’s cloth soaked in a foul-smelling
liquid reeking all the way to the moon. Everyone around me appeared overly tense
before the difficult operation to separate the man from the bull, or the bull from the
man—it hardly mattered which.
In the underground hospital, some might call it a bomb shelter, muffled
explosions occasionally reverberated through the walls. “They’re bombing us again,”
whispered a patient half-wrapped in bandages. One of the doctors was simmering
mulled wine. Another was searching for X-ray images where a felt-tip pen marked
exactly where to cut and finally separate the beast from the man.
“Even after all our miscues, the moon still strikes the sky every night,” said a
nurse whom the others reproached for handing over the wrong scalpel.
“The sun rises and sets in vain if we have to light the labyrinth with candles,”
thought the bull within me, which had not tasted grass for weeks.
“At last I shall live free of horns,” dreamed the man within me, who had not seen
the sun for years.