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It was "hands" originally, in the P. Craig Russell's The Sandman poster from 2003, drawn for the American Library Association promotional "@ Your Library" series.
Also featured in The Absolute Sandman vol. 5.
P. Craig Russell also addresses this poster in The Art of P. Craig Russell:
In 1993, I was approached by the National Library Association though DC Comics to produce their annual posters, given away to libraries across the country. This year featured Sandman, a graphic novel favorite, its success sometimes measured by its disappearance from the shelves. This piece got great distribution through libraries, but has seldom been seen elsewhere.

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Notice that the poster doesn't have the words on it, so they must have been added by Neil Gaiman.
In fact, one can see this poster in the book being leafed through in this video (at ~0:29).