What is that sound
like the memory of a foghorn?
Was that you, snoring, here
in this roomful of others tethered
in their recliners by transparent tubes
dripping chemicals? What quiet suffering
have you intruded upon, what fragile,
joyful thought have you disrupted?
You keep saying “you” because
even the you you know is some distance
from what must be a truer you, the one
others know, maybe, or the one
in the mirror, reversed—you’ll never
know her. Or the one faltering
across the room now, dragging her
pedestal stand, headed for the bathroom
with her swinging bags and tubes.
The others are watching. You want do
even this faltering gracefully—
a little beauty where it can be had.
What does anyone want but a beautiful
world? Even the Boston Bombers,
what did they want but some kind
of beauty they could understand?
And then the young one, hiding bleeding
in the boat. Did he think how he might
make his exit worthy of the end
of the world? Did the officer lifting him
gently out, half-dead, know how much
the two of them resembled the Pietà?
No, it was you who thought that,
seeing how valuable the load, so once
beautiful, so fraught with anguish,
so unaware at that moment
of the clamor he caused
around him, its long echo.