When Beside Your Bed Is the Last Time Beside Your Bed

When Beside Your Bed is the Last Time I’m Beside Your Bed      

When we can’t alter ills that upset us,

we will change their names to prevent compassion

from disturbing our unique composure:

                words to deny worlds.

Vocabulary voids original sin;

calvary of the lie reaches Calvary

just in time—to bungle Christ down from the cross;

                But: no nails, no Christ.

                                                                Donald Hall

                                                                Let Us Meditate on Virtue

I

When what? When is what is supposed 

different than what is
to see?  When the wind and water?  When
the rale on the new machine?  When

will they bring it all to measure?

When what’s left of her lungs?

When, after all those months with or recovering

from?  When again pneumonia?

When to cry after stepping on the lit cigarette?  When it singed

and riffs and rims in the bedroom

carpet but also on the bedspread?   When to her chin?

When bit by bit?  When she falls yes,

but when she's some apart or completely?.  When barely barely?  When out of her

woods but when did she start?  When

coughing stops? When again blood? when again piss

and puss?  when again?

II

I think in retrospect

these days (how else)

like Keats who knew before

he left England with Severn

he’d be gone out of there

forever eked squeezed

his fists a lung a lung

his fists a lung and me sitting

near her gurgling it was

like this for his painter

friend the only friend

who could or did or would take time

the time (something profound

was happening

here) to accompany him

all the way to Rome...     and the room

closes in on both of us.  In the end both

all of us will shrink and shrivel

from the body dying

but not before we (Severn’s and me) ink

it all in the brief alive but still

face the stroke on the paper the way

just moments ago

(years and years now ago)

we’d stroke the hair/the cheek

and see now how like April

our leafs one by one and leave

in the beginning but not before they unfurl.

And how quite like late November

they curl and crumble and devote

their numinous pieces

to the wind and soon to come snow—

III

Keats.     he      ...     well    ...    he     ...      why

wouldn’t he

had his doubts close

as he was to the mouth

of the drainpipe close as he was

to the intake of a breath listening

his brother (one gone one gone

to America) his mother

right? he must’ve                            running

or all he could do

in the end was float

to Rome to take the air there

or let the air take him

with Severn tending him a friend

a breath

a fresh word

a string let out like knots

off the

                                what side?

                                                                of the ship

to guess the wind

                                speed

                                                when will she be…

Nurse?  I touch my mother's face maybe
the way Severn touched Keats---pen stroke---going true
while there's still a bit of breath in the throat
in the bubble coming up to the lips
to the nose and so is this the moment?  or is this
the moment?  What about his?  But there’s no one true
left to ask