Classic Poem

To lie down and sleep with the dead for good:
That is what sleeping simply
Comes down to. To sleep with the dead
Is what doing anything is,
And coercively so: necromancy, necking,
Painting an old wooden door red, washing your bare hands,
Inhaling to erase your utterly perishable voice,
Stones tossed, thrown across a pond
Into the shadowed wood beyond.
I got these scars from a dog.
I got this scar in a dream.
I got this scar from a cigar.
This scar I was born with.
I got this scar preparing for a track meet.
I got this scar from a childhood disease.
I have forgotten how I got this one.
I got this scar from a can-opener
And this one next to it from a grenade-launcher.
Naked, I am Everyman: bilateral, diurnal,
Pedestrian, rhythmic, superstitious, and—like the occluded God
Of the witch-doctor or modern theologian—awful.
I got these parallel scars from one oven.
I got this series of scars from a steam-line on a destroyer.
I got this scar from a hawk-bill knife.
I got this scar from a kitchen knife.
I got this scar from sodium trichloro-acetate.
I got this scar from a fire
And this scar from a fish.
I know when I sleep that I lie down with the dead
And I know what it is to sleep with them,
With my father and his father and his father
And the solid succession of mortal fathers
Link by link back through thousands and thousands of seasons.
I fear them as tearfully
As I would have feared them before death;
Even so, how can I keep from sleeping?
To sleep at all is to sleep with all of them
Down in the dormitory of the dead, one long poem: the fathers,
Mothers, sisters, brothers, friends,
All people
And all flamboyant animals and hapless plants.
This scar I got from the innocent-looking edge of a piece of paper.
I got these scars from myself (a mistake).
I got this scar chopping wood with the Iliad in my blood.
I got this particular scar, and this, and this,
And this circle of satellite scars, from a team of surgeons.
Don't touch.
This looks like a scar but isn't.
I remain (my darlings, my dying darlings) at a loss to account for it.
To lie down and sleep with the dead for good:
That is what sleeping simply
Comes down to. To sleep with the dead
Is what doing anything is,
And coercively so: necromancy, necking,
Painting an old wooden door red, washing your bare hands,
Inhaling to erase your utterly perishable voice,
Stones tossed, thrown across a pond
Into the shadowed wood beyond.
I got these scars from a dog.
I got this scar in a dream.
I got this scar from a cigar.
This scar I was born with.
I got this scar preparing for a track meet.
I got this scar from a childhood disease.
I have forgotten how I got this one.
I got this scar from a can-opener
And this one next to it from a grenade-launcher.
Naked, I am Everyman: bilateral, diurnal,
Pedestrian, rhythmic, superstitious, and—like the occluded God
Of the witch-doctor or modern theologian—awful.
I got these parallel scars from one oven.
I got this series of scars from a steam-line on a destroyer.
I got this scar from a hawk-bill knife.
I got this scar from a kitchen knife.
I got this scar from sodium trichloro-acetate.
I got this scar from a fire
And this scar from a fish.
I know when I sleep that I lie down with the dead
And I know what it is to sleep with them,
With my father and his father and his father
And the solid succession of mortal fathers
Link by link back through thousands and thousands of seasons.
I fear them as tearfully
As I would have feared them before death;
Even so, how can I keep from sleeping?
To sleep at all is to sleep with all of them
Down in the dormitory of the dead, one long poem: the fathers,
Mothers, sisters, brothers, friends,
All people
And all flamboyant animals and hapless plants.
This scar I got from the innocent-looking edge of a piece of paper.
I got these scars from myself (a mistake).
I got this scar chopping wood with the Iliad in my blood.
I got this particular scar, and this, and this,
And this circle of satellite scars, from a team of surgeons.
Don't touch.
This looks like a scar but isn't.
I remain (my darlings, my dying darlings) at a loss to account for it.