The Big Sleep

In a passage in Raymond Chandler's novel "The Big Sleep", he writes of death:
"What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on top of a high hill. You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that. Oil and water were the same as wind and air to you. You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell."
Craig Brown in an article in today's Daily Mail says that what Chandler wrote there did not express his real feelings, especially towards his wife who died before him (she was much older than him). I knew that he had once, before his success came through his detective stories, written some poetry but never had I, until now in the same article, read any. Craig Brown quotes one. It's about Chandler's wife.
"When the bright clothes hang in the scented closet...
And the three long hairs in a brush and a folded kerchief
And the fresh made bed and the fresh, plump pillows
On which no head will lie
And all that is left of the long wild dream."
A friend of mine, Roger Ormerod, also a successful writer of detective stories - one of his detectives was a lady with the name Philippa Marlowe - also wrote a poem to his estranged or dead wife.
I once published a short book of poetry for myself and a writing group of which I was a tutor and I included Roger's poem in it. Here is a snatch of it:
"Sometimes in the arid nights
The moon would slant across your empty pillow,
But not upon your precious hair,
Because you were no longer there."
Similar feelings from two writers of detective stories.
John Malkovich, a couple of years ago, opened a hotel in Cardiff called "The Big Sleep". Did he know what 'the big sleep' meant, I wonder?