The Curtain

All that day
the man was dying in the next bed.
We never saw him, the curtain drawn,
my father and I on the other side,
the only voice between us mine.
My father could no longer speak
though as the morning wore on
he could hear the man's labored breathing
until the doctor arrived to ask him
if he wanted anything done
to prolong his life and he answered
clearly, as my father could not, No.

I heard the doctor tell someone
to write that down. I heard him tell
the nurse to call the man's son. They left,
the nurse returning to ask him if he
wanted something to ease the pain
of the wracking cough which seized him
again and again and he answered Yes,
the hours passing, his cough subsiding,
his breathing growing quieter
as the drugs took hold. My father's eyes
flickered in and out of sleep, my father
who could no longer deny anything,
who winced when I said, answering
the question his eyes had asked,
the man was very sick.

Late in the afternoon the son,
a grandson arrived. They tried
to rouse him, the grandson's adolescent voice
breaking as he said, Grampa we're here
though the man was beyond hearing,
the son saying to no one in particular
I didn't think it would be so quick.
I could have said something then,
how the man had answered earlier
how perhaps he did not know the drugs
would take him, float him so far toward death
before they arrived, but I did not.
My father and I his silent witnesses
his last day passed.