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# Variations on the Word Sleep
- URL: https://poetry101.love/variations-on-the-word-sleep/
- Published: 2022-03-12T17:15:15.000Z
- Updated: 2022-03-12T17:15:15.000Z
- Description: by Margaret Atwood
- Author: Melissa Anderson
- Tags: Margaret Atwood, #Import 2026-11-04 19:11

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.

Atwood, Margaret. [Selected Poems II : 1976 - 1986](https://www.google.com/books/edition/Selected%5FPoems%5FII/uns87xPwjL0C?hl=en&gbpv=0&kptab=getbook&ref=poetry101.love). United States, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1987.