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Poetry

Gethsemane’s sleepers, be with me
If I sleep.

Hypnopomps to the cock’s crow,
To the olive grove’s

Dawnshadows’ undergnarl.

Skull-place, tricrossed, two-thieved hill,
Over-

Hang me if I wake.

 

The bed-world
Is the total part,

Unrememberable mnemonics
Muttered through the dream

(Now I lay me,
Tarry here awhile—

Now I lay me
Down—tarry here

With me awhile,
And wait, and watch—

Sleep-horde, sleep’s
Grace-hoard, reinterred, salt-preserved.

 

Anti-
Heliotropic
Garden-sleeper:
Somnotropic, thanatropic, oneirotrope—

It’s too late now, the waker said, sleep on, sleep on, the hour’s
Already at hand

 

Wash, Lord, your
Hands of me.
Take
The wine-sponge, myrrhed
And galled, vinegared,
At the sword’s tip, when I
Won’t thirst.

Take the rood, if I refuse
To stagger as you please.

Unloose me,
Unaccountably:

Barabbas me….

 

Let some mouthdoor
Be rolled from that

Not-for-years-
Entered

Sepulcher in me, white-
Mold-wallsplotched,
Stalactite-stabbed:
Let some eastering be

Done there, in the dripstone
Damp, let its days of deicide

Be westered, be dusked….

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The Image archive is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.

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