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Variation on the Word Sleep by Margaret Atwood

By T.

10 December 2005

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Variation on the Word Sleep
Margaret Atwood

I would like to watch you sleeping,
which may not happen.
I would like to watch you,
sleeping. I would like to sleep
with you, to enter
your sleep as its smooth dark wave
slides over my head

and walk with you through that lucent
wavering forest of bluegreen leaves
with its watery sun & three moons
towards the cave where you must descend,
towards your worst fear

I would like to give you the silver
branch, the small white flower, the one
word that will protect you
from the grief at the center
of your dream, from the grief
at the center. I would like to follow
you up the long stairway
again & become
the boat that would row you back
carefully, a flame
in two cupped hands
to where your body lies
beside me, and you enter
it as easily as breathing in

I would like to be the air
that inhabits you for a moment
only. I would like to be that unnoticed
& that necessary.

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This poem appeared in Selected Poems II (1976-1986) by Margaret Atwood, published by Houghton Mifflin, 1987. (Available on: Amazon • Bookshop)

ABOUT MARGARET ATWOOD

Margaret Atwood was born in 1939 in Ottawa, Ontario. She earned a BA from Victoria College at the University of Toronto and an MA from Harvard University. Atwood is the author of more than fifty books of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. Her works of poetry include Dearly (Ecco, 2020); The Door (Houghton Mifflin 2007); Eating Fire: Selected Poems, 1965–1995 (Virago Press Limited, 1998); and Morning in the Burned House (Houghton Mifflin, 1995), which was a co-winner of the… (more)