Part 1
Produced by Al Haines, from scans provided by Steven Bartlett
THE HOUSE OF SLEEP
Elizabeth Bartlett
_The House of Sleep_ was originally published in 1975 by Autograph Editions in Colima, Mexico, and is now out-of-print. The author's literary executor, Steven James Bartlett, has decided to make the book available as an open access publication, freely available to readers through Project Gutenberg under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-NoDerivs license, which allows anyone to distribute this work without changes to its content, provided that both the author and the original URL from which this work was obtained are mentioned, that the contents of this work are not used for commercial purposes or profit, and that this work will not be used without the copyright holder's written permission in derivative works (i.e., you may not alter, transform, or build upon this work without such permission). The full legal statement of 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 who I am in my sleep, behind my face.
If you ask which of them is false and which is true
Enter the house with me and call, I'll answer you.
Here inside the darkness, the eye of light opens
As mind travels inward to a fourth dimension.
There is no perspective of other or outside.
Both obverse and reverse are simultaneous
While past and present form a folding wave that flows
Now backward, then forward in one eternal dream.
I found it as a child, a house that was all mine
Where I could think and be whatever I believed.
Half of me stayed outside on guard, aware of spies
The inner self went free to wonder as it pleased.
Leaving the day behind, I came upon the night
And there I dreamed of things past all imagining.
Memory is no stranger in the house of sleep.
It comes as a visitor for a reunion.
If a private occasion, with the family
Or else with those forgotten who have long been gone.
The waiting house is ready for us to gather.
Together or separately our memories meet.
Waking in the night, I have wondered where I am
Knowing I have been away and not yet returned.
I lie still and wait between absence and presence
Conscious of being witness to my sleep and wake.
Here's body, inert, prepared to revert to clay.
O wanderer with my lamp, how dim grows the light.
Flying effortlessly I escape gravity
And seaborne, breathe through gills to swim past coral isles
Where I emerge on shores that climb up ancient roads.
Always, my origins enact some past within
Recalling elements of former existence.
Save two, that I renounce: bloodrust fire, fleshtorn ground.
Here I need no clock to tell me what time it is.
The day, season, year conform to no calendar.
No compass or map points my route or direction.
Sensation is all: the shape and sound of feeling.
I learn what I think by choice of symbols, meanings.
I invent my world as much as it invents me.
A baton like a pendulum swings back and forth.
Across the universe it moves in perfect time
Leading an orchestra of stars through measured space.
A score arranged with such grandeur, I merely hear
Its echoes through the walls of sleep-- how faint, how far
While my heart beats to the rhythm of earth's passage.
The twelve hours of the night are paths between the stars.
Whichever one you take leads to this centered house
If you speak the password to those who guard the gates.
You must not look at them or touch them on the way
Lest you be left alone and hear the triple bark.
For the rest, safe journey and sweet dreams until dawn.
How the bedtime refrain still echoes through the house:
"Good night, sweet dreams, see you tomorrow." Was it wish
Or something more substantial for child to sleep on
Like a pillow filled throughout the night with promise?
Which was kept and shall be kept in years yet to come
When all the yesterdays that made me, wake at dawn.
In genesis the dream began and came to life
By dividing the form from void, the dark from light
And parting the sea from dry land, mother from child
Gave image its own reflection by day and night
But kept the sleeping and waking for seem and like
That the timeless and undying remain in-sight.
Our dreamscape is a Mil Cumbres across the years.
Peak after peak they rise like crests above a sea
In which we plunge, swim, dive and drown beneath each wave.
Yet breath returns and eyes grow clear from time to time
As all stands still, becalmed, at rest, and we can see
There, where we were. Here, where we are. How far. Which way.
It was a garden of people at all seasons.
I saw hands at work everywhere, none of them still.
Some were planting new souls in the fresh earth.
Others went about the weeding, pruning, hoeing
Their baskets filled with human plants of every kind.
While leaves, endless leaves kept falling all around me.
Among the Joshua trees, I saw a stone cross
Both claiming world salvation from brush, sand and thorn
While I stood on a mountain, waiting for the ark
To save me from destruction, drowned by floods of sun.
But the fiery waves rose up forty days and nights
And there was not a sign of clouds, and no dove came.
A bird stopped me as I started to walk across.
"You can not enter the circle, you have no wings."
So I went back and I looked for them on the earth.
But none of all the winged insects knew where mine were.
So I went on and I looked for them in the sea.
And the fish told me of angels who looked like birds.
With this ring I thee wed, said the moon, said the earth.
I saw it overhead, a crystal band of ice
Through which the eye of God bore witness once again
To living light and love within the cosmic void.
I heard the vows exchanged between the cold and dark
Then with my own, warm breath I wed the night and slept.
Through the mirror and through the fog, all things reverse.
I see the right side on the left, the left side, right.
I see the shapes of what has been behind, transposed.
A camera floats above my head as dreams submerge.
A shadow moves beyond my feet in backward stride.
The mirror and the fog are one, and I, enclosed.
What was the Eskimo doing in the tropics?
What was the Hottentot doing in the arctic?
Caught between the two, I asked what choice was mine?
Having to freeze or burn, I felt, was too extreme.
Yet heart elected south and brain elected north
Since a temperate zone in heaven was no more.
I wanted to lift the poor and ignorant soul
To feed and clothe it, to give it eyes and ears.
I led it away from hunger, cold and terror
Helping it to climb, to trust my choice of freedom.
But when I let go, the peak opened with wide jaws
For the slip, the fall-- and I grabbed the soul, and ran.
What shall I be, I asked of Tarot cards and stars
That I might live as fits my tastes, beliefs and cares?
First, be a prince, with pleasures, treasures, all desires.
Then, be a priest, with holy thoughts of love divine.
Third, a peasant, with simple needs and natural ways.
Last, as poet, combine the three--or curse your fate.
It looked like a mountain with garden terraces
A holiday setting and dazzling in sunshine
Where one could be at ease to stroll and meet old friends
Exploring all the paths unhurried by the years
Feeling the light within increase with heightened joy
While going up and on from terrace to terrace.
I went down into the vaults of time's library
Down through sunless, airless corridors staffed by ghosts.
Down the winding halls and cobbled stairs daubed with earth
Past the rows of book graves in a cemetery
Of old words, until I came to the last, first one
When I heard a rumble, saw a flash and woke dumb.
I followed God until he stopped at a crossroads.
On the one side was a cliff high above the sea.
On the other, a dense woods baited with summer.
Future unknown, I asked which way was I to go?
He pointed left, where the sun bowed low in the west.
And God, I asked? To the right, he said and vanished.
It was a long road through a fog that swirled like clouds
And many were going with me, behind, ahead
Though no one spoke or stopped, moved past or turned aside.
But when we reached the edge of time, I grew afraid
Until one found me there and smiled and took my hand
Then led me step by step again, a little child.
First, the night came to me in the shape of a moth.
With a soft flick like breath, its wing-tips grazed my head.
Then, from a hollow tree, a hoot owl mourned its cry
And as I turned to look, I thought the moon turned, too.
Beyond the road, a skunk. Within my room, a rose.
So I sat up, I think, while the night spoke and spoke.
I hear the word incessantly as a chorus
A word whose voices are composed of all my years
Like a requiem long rehearsed in every key
And begun the day of my birth, inside of me
A word sung for my soul's repose while I am here
An earthling, bent on a journey still amorphous.
How to find the way back by subway, streetcar, bus...
Can a hill disappear or the stream in a park?
The morning's scent of rolls, the sound of skates at dusk
Laundry roofs, coalbin chutes, wagons, carts, iron stoops...
Like footprints in the snow, the memories fall and drift.
I walk, I look, I ask, a shadow in the past.
I ran to say goodbye to the last railway train
Whose old, musty freight cars were creaking at the joints.
In it, tons of paper, unpublished manuscripts
Heading for the graveyard like passengers turned ghosts.
At the rear, an organ, installed in the caboose
Began the slow, slow march, while the wind mourned and blew.
O most blessed and damned of women, so greatly loved!
I know by my dreams that your own have never died.
Before there was Egypt or Troy, you were a slave.
Before Tristram or Abelard, your face was pale.
While poets made heaven and hell to prove your charms
Your passion, beauty, grief and joy slept in my arms.
With all that space to explore, how could I resist?
Finding my own place out there, the wonder of it!
A stretched canvas came in view, linen, framed in gold
With a palette never used, meant for me alone.
I dipped my brush and painted the place I loved best
Then forever set my claim: north, south, east and west.
I had to go on and on, the search was not done.
Winding corridors, walls leading from door to door.
Mice, lions, sheep, chickens, frogs, unassorted odds.
Nothing suited--quite-- despite the resemblances.
I heard voices, laughter, groans, sounds foreign to mine.
Mirrors, symbols, signs... twice, I almost found myself.
The room was full of eyes, whichever way I looked.
Over walls, ceiling, floor, they darted back and forth
Their eyelash hands and feet mocking me and my book.
"You can not get away, I've told you that before."
Daddy longlegs reaching, still haunting, still speaking.
"A spider ghost, you say? The harvest comes, daughter."
They tossed the pillow from one hand to the other.
With roars of laughter, it zipped, it flew, was caught and thrown.
My seams ripped open, scattering my heart outside.
Slowly, painfully, I gathered it together
And lay down to sleep, clutching my life, my pillow.
Feathers of dead birds, sterile echoes of lost flights.
A bill collector appeared, flourishing old bills.
"Your father gone, and mother, who will pay for these?"
I turned to the telephone, one disconnected.
I looked inside the mailbox, full of dead letters.
I searched through files and desk drawers, all bankbooks cancelled.
Only one thing left to do-- to wake, and escape.
It was a lettuce morning, crisp in pale sunlight.
By noon it was canary, cat's eye and corn grain.
As shadows crept through the hills, the sea turned bilious.
Dusk spilled a goodbye tunnel down a shifting sky.
Then driftwood, fuming the air with its smoke and cough.
After night crashed, we picked up plans for tomorrow.
When will the words be opened and the book unsealed?
Not till the time of the end of empires and beasts.
Then will the dream be written according to men?
Not till the signs and vision have become as one.
How shall we learn to know them as true evidence?
Not till all human senses merge with light again.
They were gone for days, the hunters and fishermen
Challenging the beasts who claimed the land and the sea.
The young sang their praise all through the gloried summer
While the women danced and gave them welcoming feasts.
How their deeds warmed us winter nights! how bright the blaze!
Now, we are fearful and cold. We need more old men.
I turned back the thick, heavy calendar of years
Laboring, page by century by page of scroll
To restore the undiscovered new world once more
Hoping to reverse the winds and tides, west to east
To exchange the ships, the crews, the conquests and all.
But gained what by throwing Columbus overboard?
Shakespeare and Cervantes died the same day and year.
So too Diogenes and Great Alexander
Although each said farewell in places far apart.
What extinguished both flames at one instant of time?
A whirlwind in the night or a merciful rain?
May a storm at my death help me find my partner.
All of us who saw it from the ground testified
It was the tortoise that fell and killed Aeschylus.
So Christ, Socrates, Galileo were killed, too.
We, the groundlings who witnessed their deaths, swear to you
It was the tortoise each time. It fell from the air.
Some say eagles, by letting them fall. But who knows?
I watched his clay flesh take its changing form from thought
And fling the fiction of his birth-by-chance to scorn.
Science, he would say, is another way of life...
Without a flutter or doubt to betray his eyes.
Such utter belief, I found it hard to resist
Suspending my own-- he holds his world with such ease.
Then she who had been my wise teacher in the past
Came and stood at the foot of my bed, calling, "Child...
I have come to say goodbye to you at long last
For I join The Great Intelligence this same night
There, where the substance of all shadows is pure light..."
Which vanished, as I wept in the dark, blind and wild.
Not too much light left, I collect the candle's tears.
Prodigal before of the sun and its seasons
Now I search the night for glowworms or gleams of snow.
Asleep open-eyed, I turn my wax world slowly
Around a lifetime of continents and oceans
Till the last star shrinks, then shudders, and then goes out.
I saw it emptied room by room and piece by piece
Until the house stood vacant of all but its bones.
No paintings, no books, no flowers, fruits or music.
A silence anonymous as space void of time.
"Wait," my body cried, "do not board up the windows!
"The owner left a message: she's coming home soon."
Because I longed to comprehend the infinite
I drew a line between the known and unknown
From zero base to its apex point opposite
Thus dividing all past time from all future time
And all of space, the positive from negative.
Where both sides met, they formed the infinite present.
I saw the church bend its steeples, ears to the ground
Then place its pulpit on the roof to speak to God
Proclaiming the kingdom of men at last had come
Who gave each day its daily bread, whose will was done
That none be tempted to trespass or do evil
Seeing the power and glory on earth, fulfilled.
I am not one. Among the many I am part.
I do not know how many or who, where they are.
Each has a name, a face, an age--none of them mine.
Yet are we all cells of the selfsame root in time.
No closer ties bind us to those we call our own.
For we are one, living each other's lives, unknown.
The sign said City of Dogs and I went inside.
The streets, laid out as kennels, were strangely quiet.
Posted German Shepherd guards merely curled their lips
And growled as I passed by them into the main office.
The huge picture startled me. Nothing else was there.
Only Big Brother, the Chief, who looked down and stared.
Why, with so much obsidian, coal, pitch and tar
Was it so hard, I ask of God, to make black black
Or, given milk, snow, lilies, pearls, to make white white?
Yet nowhere is there creature found to have black bones
Or, among the many species, one with white blood.
I could question other colors: yellow, red, brown?
I see them, a standing army six million strong.
They are armed with the weapons of our memory.
On all fronts, they keep watch, to warn and remind us.
At our call, they rise from the graveyard of our minds
And advance, immune to hunger, guns, barbed wire, gas...
Their mission: to rescue time from its own worst foe.
I know them, the assassins, by the way they breathe
As they slip behind the wheel to strangle the road
As they dive-bomb through the air to explode the night.
I hear the changing rhythms of their pulse, speech, steps
As they finger the trigger, as they grasp the knife.
I clock the surge of passions in their race with death.
Outside the house were beggars, thugs, maniacs, thieves.
An alien world as perceived through curtained windows.
Seen from afar, the fires, riots, car wrecks, brawls
Made me recoil and threatened the night while I slept.
Nor found I joy in revels, circuses and feats
My skin thin, too, for the rocks, the drums, the stampedes.
They came marching by the billions, armies of ants.
From woods and fields, on roads and streets, through walls, roofs, stairs
An all-out attack on V-Day, V versus man.
Fire ants, flyers, drivers, cutters for ground, sea, air.
Overrunning, overcoming, world-wide, as planned.
Timed to the hour and minute, none of us spared.
I spoke to God and Devil, waiting for reply.
I whispered into both ears, having seen two sides.
I told of men and women, of youth and of age
Of joy, love, goodness, beauty, and their counterface.
Each question and emotion met with silent dread.
One listened to the living and one, to the dead.
Butterfly wings, a pair of lungs, a bivalve shell.
I see the M and W traced on my palms.
Maple keys, antlers, feathers, ferns, the tails of fish.
The one design repeats itself in endless halves.
Mountain to valley, spring to fall, high tide to low.
We are each other's counterpart, together, whole.
Map in hand, I studied the surfaces and depths
Of the land assigned to me for exploration.
Flesh engraved, the contours clearly showed the main routes
Time had paved for me to follow by sun and stars.
Whether eyes misread the signs or feet betrayed me
All the skies my palms enclosed led far out to sea.
THE SAILOR'S STORY
1
Evenings on cobbled streets leading down to the wharves
Where boys matched oars with men, straining pride and muscle
Their boats nosing the wind to catch the next tide's run.
But it was not fish food I hungered for, or proof
As I walked back each time, the youngest son of five
With alien eyes and thoughts reaching out to starboard.
2
There was no goodbye that last night, no righteous words.
I left silently with no one to look at me
But my own shadow, the wind lifting my footsteps
Down stone passageways, lantern, pack and gear in hand.
Until, there it was, riding at anchor, far out.
I paused a moment and then ran, homeless, from home.
3
Always a convoy for the long sea voyages
The ship like a whale or a shark with pilot fish
The hills receding as our masts climbed up the sky
And I knew it would be weeks before we returned
Though we had strong sails, good winds and plenty of hands.
Yet I never can recall the last trip of all.
4
I remember the islands flashing in the sun
Mostly barren rocks and slopes of tattered vineyards
The waterfronts deserted except by seabirds
No one to trade with and our vessel filled with jars.
So we headed past the coast toward open ocean
Where strange crews hailed us, and for honey, gave us salt.
5
Then came fever and all the sick were put ashore.
We had good care: warm milk, vinegar baths and beds.
When my head cleared, there was a road along the cliffs
Which I followed past the village behind the goats
Feeling the ground steady and true for a good house.
Until sunset, when I saw the sea flowing west.
6
So I left that past and shipped into the future
A boy born on land with sea legs, a strange creature
Neither fish nor fowl, yet something of each, between.
My head at the bow, my feet at the stern, who dreamed
Whose ribs creaked and strained to outride wind, tide and stars.
Blood of the sailor, a part of me forever.
"Her poems give one a sense of intelligence and sensibility." Wallace Stevens.
"Her work is clear, swift, and strong." Mark Van Doren
"Her poems assuredly justify the writer, and should console the right reader (if anything can)." Marianne Moore
"I like her poems; they think, and they mean what they say." Conrad Aiken
"Certainly impressive work." Kenneth Rexroth
"Mature, her poems have a bite to them." Richard Eberhart
"The new form is most interesting; the poems beautiful and distinguished." Allen Tate
The poems in this book are written in a new form--they are called twelve-tone poems. The form was adapted by the author from Arnold Schoenberg's musical system, using speech sounds in place of notes.
This autographed edition is limited to 100 copies, designed and illustrated by Paul Bartlett. The poems are set in Regal 14 type on Westland stock. Printed by Impresora Gutenberg, Colima, Mexico.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Elizabeth Bartlett (1911-1994) was an American poet and writer noted for her lyrical and symbolic poetry, creation of the new twelve-tone form of poetry, founder of the international non-profit organization Literary Olympics, Inc., and known as an author of fiction, essays, reviews, translations, and as an editor. She is not to be confused with the British poet (1924-2008) of the same name. For more detailed information about her life, work, and critical commendations, see the Wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Bartlett_%28American_poet%29.
Bartlett's most notable achievements include: