Bronze Age Dream

I dreamed I woke up from a dream
To a most unfamiliar scene
Of dwellings lined up in a row
As if in furrows were they sown
And stacked in squares like bales of wheat
All standing on each other's feet!

And tethered fore a horse of sorts
With bellow lungs of poisoned snort
But not an ox that pulls a plough
But more an idol kind of cow
Made of bronze or tin I think
That from black rivers stooped to drink.

Strangest most was how they moved
Not free, but regimented, grooved
Right and left, like weave and weft
With empty eyes warped straight ahead
stifled, stilted, to and fro
With nowhere meaningful to go.

And eyes fixed in all but youth
Too young to understand the route
Theirs alone seemed the thrill
To splash through seas of daffodil
Or run on sand on naked feet
With open eyes to love and greet.

I fell back upon my bed
But neither woke nor slept, instead
I dreamed a scream and wildly wept
- O Shaman, tell me what it means
As there we were, trapped in-between
The real, the dream, and the dream's dream!