Life is a hospital ward, and the beds we are put in
are the ones we don’t want to be in.
We’d get better sooner if put over by the window.
Or by the radiator, one could suffer easier there.
At night, the impatient soul dreams of faraway places.
The Aegean: all marble and light. Where, upon a beach
as flat as a map, you could bask in the sun like a lizard.
The Pole: where, bathing in darkness, you could watch
the sparks from Hell reflected in a sky of ice. The soul
could be happier anywhere than where it happens to be.
Anywhere but here. We take our medicine daily,
nod politely, and grumble occasionally.
But it is out of our hands. Always the wrong place.
We didn’t make our beds, but we lie in them.