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I mentioned-- and when I was
reading in the prose thing,

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I mentioned that poem I
started began with that phrase

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'two sleeps,' and I typed
in the middle of the page.

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The poem went through
a lot of drafts.

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And in the course of the
drafts, that phrase just

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got cut from the final poem.

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And I sent this poem to--

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I sent the book to Mary Ruefle.

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And she wrote me a very
lovely note about the book.

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She's very kind.

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But she said, I'm sad because
I missed the phrase two sleeps.

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What happened to it?

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Which is like such a Mary
Ruefle thing to say, right?

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And so I wrote this poem
for her called "Two Sleeps."

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So it's sort of like closes
this circle of the "Two

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Sleeps" for Mary Ruefle.

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When the other father
told his child something

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will happen in two sleeps,

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At first I didn't understand
he meant something comforting.

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Time passing with quick ease,

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A way to measure nights,

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Numbered in unearned peace.

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I just thought of my own
two sleepers who often wake,

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waking me.

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Though, even in sleep,
I'm always already awake

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At that oddest hour
that does not end,

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The crooked, unnumbered one.

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Then they fall back into
their respective oblivions.

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I lie shrouded in this barge
that does not cross the river,

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listening.

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No music of the dead.

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No wise silence.

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No penultimate dream.

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I just worry every particle
can now be counted.

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That we are all caretakers
of a dying patient

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named the self or the sea.

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I lie here and worry.

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I'm worrying about
all the wrong things.

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According to some
system, I worry,

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I myself created,
probably in my sleep.

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It is very utterly dark, like
a branch in total darkness.

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I cannot be discerned.

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All night, I stand
beneath the tree.

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