Sleep

In that low
land where to look up is vertigo:
slide down the steep
slope where is
only a frictionless long gliss
into a deeper deep;
but there are no words for steep or deep in sleep.

Textual History

I.  First Line:
            a.  Mice and bison frisk on the lawn
            b.  Gridlock of bison on the plain
            c.  Congress: “Exterminate all the brutes!”
            d.  There aren't any any more.

II.  Second Line:
            a.  but the grouse ate the mouse and the time ate the rhyme:
            b.  with many a plaintive moo.
            c.  Then came a mix-up.
            d.  Because of nothing in particular.

III.  Third Line:
            a.  Danced Dan the Tan Man
            b.  Unlike General Custer
            c.  Wild Bill Hickock
            d.  Nobody did it.

IV.  Fourth Line:
            a.  in the Land of Authority.
            b.  they had manes with little luster.
            c.  shot the bison, not the Sioux.
            d.  And the skies are not cloudy all day.

Dictated by Donne

And as a tartar King, in wolfskin coat,
Come to England, turns his eye, must strut, stalk, gloat,
Contemn the spoon-like women, blast the small men,
All while th' interpreter, with voice serene,
Tells how his master likes our English rose,
So translate me ill, God my God, and glose
My catachreses into thy faultless prose;                                                                     
My virtues spell in rubrics double-size,
My vices, Lord, I beg thee euphemize;
That, rewritten to a ghost upon the Last
Day I might ever laud thee, Paraphrast!