For Donald Clark
Drugged and drowsy but not asleep
I heard my blind roommate's daughter
helping her with her meal:
“What's that? Squash?”
“No. It's spinach.”
Back from a brain-scan, she dozed
to the sound of the Soaps: adultery,
amnesia, shady business deals,
and long, white hospital halls....
No separation between life and art.
I heard two nurses whispering:
Mr. Malcomson had died.
An hour later one of them came to say
that a private room was free.
A chill spring breeze
perturbed the plastic drape.
I lay back on the new bed,
and had a vision of souls
stacked up like pelts
under my soul, which was ill —
so heavy with grief
it kept the others from rising.
No varicolored tubes
serpentined beneath the covers;
I had the vital signs of a healthy,
early-middle-aged woman.
There was nothing to cut or dress,
remove or replace.
A week of stupor. Sun and moon
rose and set over the small enclosed
court, the trees....
The doctor’ s face appeared
and disappeared
over the foot of the bed. By slow degrees
the outlandish sadness waned.
Restored to my living room
I looked at the tables, chairs, and pictures
with something like delight,
only pale, faint — as from a great height.
I let the phone ring; the mail
accrued unopened
on the table in the hall.