THE HOUSE OF SLEEP
Elizabeth Bartlett
The House of Sleep was originally published in 1975 by AutographEditions in Colima, Mexico, and is now out-of-print. The author'sliterary executor, Steven James Bartlett, has decided to make thebook available as an open access publication, freely available toreaders through Project Gutenberg under the terms of the CreativeCommons Attribution-Noncommercial-NoDerivs license, which allowsanyone to distribute this work without changes to its content,provided that both the author and the original URL from which thiswork was obtained are mentioned, that the contents of this workare not used for commercial purposes or profit, and that this workwill not be used without the copyright holder's written permissionin derivative works (i.e., you may not alter, transform, or buildupon this work without such permission). The full legal statementof this license may be found at:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcode
To Paul
When you gave me a painting of hammocks,
I knew:
The dreamer tells the truth, the self awake
does not.
For years I raged against the images
you drew.
How they stared, gloomy shrouds, whenever I
forgot.
To rest, be still—I swore that was a way
of death.
Yet find more lives in sleep than I have years
ahead.
THE HOUSE OF SLEEP
by
Elizabeth Bartlett
AUTOGRAPH EDITIONS
Colima, Mexico
1975
Copyright © 1975 by Elizabeth Bartlett
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this
book in whole or in part in any form.
First Edition
Acknowledgement: some of these poems have appeared in
The Virginia Quarterly
BOOKS BY THE AUTHOR
Poems of Yes and No
Behold This Dreamer
Poetry Concerto
It Takes Practice Not to Die
Threads
Selected Poems
Twelve-Tone Poems
THE HOUSE OF SLEEP
It is a house with many doors,
no two alike.
I am at home in all its rooms
of time and place.
My changing person, gender, speech
hold no surprise.
I know wh