ARCHIBALD MACLEISH, UPHILL FARM CONWAY, MASSACHUSETTS

51955] September 3

Dear Anne (please let me)

I shouldn't send you this because I know perfectly well
it will be a very different poem before it sees the light -
or any light but yours. But what you said yesterday about
sleep - that quick certainty of a saying - went so deep with
me that I have to show you, inadequate though it surely is,
the sign of it. I couldn't sleep last night - or not for more
than an hour or two - and that phrase of yours took hold of
me. Please don't think of troubling to answer. You have
so many letters you _must_ write and there is no _must_ here.
If it changes and betters itself I'll send it you.
It was a deep happiness to see you.

AN INCANTATION

for Anne Lindbergh who said sleep is a gift

Not as forgetfulness but gift,
And not as solace but delight,
Come, sleep, and from my body lift
The dead of night,

Not as release and not as loss
But as the slow suffusing moon
Among the restless leaves - that peace -
O sleep, come soon.