You must remove your sleepmask, haul it
from your eyes, sleep a white sleep without
slapping floodwaters—let it go,
let its thumbscrews loosen, let it unwind
like bandages (lily-flavored flesh
beneath, pearl-colored the pale
caused by)—lower it: sightseer
in oblivion, all the dumb
joy of death’s languorous leaning
over happy tombstones—send it downstream
on sweet pontoons, give it back
to the blanks, fold it like two soft cleavers—
what once ripped your pillow
like shrapnel flesh—what was sleeping
with coal on your eyelids, what’s worn
threadbare by black wheels in your forehead,
what deepest blue abided by—let it down—