Chafing, Chipping Away at Parts Unequal Pantoum [Sleep (1937)]

Oozing a sweet, dark cool sleep to us in loving, not suicide
They come dragging the big sooted bag of possibility,
Whereto they schlep them, to their various therapies,
Shame, like a cipher, reappears now to add us together—

Grabbing the scroll of our instruments, in the possibility,
Dissected frog twitching-sparks in pitted collagen
Of the lip-bitten reader, privately elaborating to die happy, if naturally,
But frankly, there is not much life surrounding making

Lips speak ghosts, still and before the unraveling collagen
Fibers of the face, so painfully striking during store hours.
Something, waves in wallpaper, lies waiting and making
Mental notes of those thrown confusedly together at a table:

She, who with swaying balsam stick posed, so often during store hours,
Dips back in dismay, to keep her pliant heart held together.
She cannot outsmart this monument, cryptically thrown on a table
Of their bargaining; and thus, we are only to be taught a slackening

In this not so subtle form of life—adjusting to a clearing together
And bracing the difference, wondering which of these props to use?
Scratched, and sleepwalking through, sending all branches scrolling
Out of concern for her neighbors, in each deep swallow of sleep.

Sleep is the gauntlet thrown by two shrugging actors, a useless prop
Of the past has fallen out of place, ah but for the fear of walking up and catching
It in the vacancies of an afternoon, where the body's burning and bearing
The loss of radio contact with the ground, ending everything with a guttering

Wind that has sent for you—her manner is coaxing and is catching,
Up ahead, this moment you and another built an embrasure, just for you,
Complete with the sincerest send off to researches into flight, beyond
To founder, where you float thoughtfully misconstruing the possiblities.