The monster continued to utter wild and incoherent self-reproaches. At length I gathered resolution to address him in a pause of the tempest of his passion: “Your repentance,” I said, “is now superfluous. If you had listened to the voice of conscience, and heeded the stings of remorse, before you had urged your diabolical vengeance to this extremity, Frankenstein would yet have lived.”
“And do you dream?” said the daemon.
from “Frankenstein”
by Mary Shelley
So Mary Shelley possibly with help
from her poet boyfriend wrote a novel
and at the very climax of the book
the monster describes itself as alone
more alone even than Satan himself
who has fallen angels for companions
and the monster asks its creator’s friend
by Frankenstein’s body, “And do you dream?”
Frankenstein’s friend makes an attempt to state
the context he sees around the monster
but the monster has a soliloquy
to deliver and the ability
to define and describe its own context
and the monster with its creator’s friend
is still alone and delivers its speech
and is still alone and still a monster.
What would Frankenstein’s friend if asked today
“And do you dream?” even attempt to state—
“I like when the TV flashes bright lights
and I like when the TV yells at me” ?—
to put a context around the monster
Mary Shelley never could have foreseen
even if her poet boyfriend had helped
even if the lonely monster could care?
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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