Poems, 1957–1967

THE HOSPITAL WINDOW

THE HOSPITAL WINDOW I have just come down from my father. Higher and higher he lies Above me in a blue light Shed by a tinted window. I drop through six white floors And then step out onto pavement. Still feeling my father ascend, I start to cross the firm street, My shoulder blades shining with all The glass the huge building can raise. Now I must turn round and face it, And know his one pane from the others. Each window possesses the sun As though it burned there on a wick. I wave, like a man catching fire. All the deep-dyed windowpanes flash, And, behind them, all the white rooms They turn to the color of Heaven. Ceremoniously, gravely, and weakly, Dozens of pale hands are waving Back, from inside their flames. Yet one pure pane among these Is the bright, erased blankness of nothing. I know that my father is there, In the shape of his death still living. The traffic increases around me Like a madness called down on my head. The horns blast at me like shotguns, And drivers lean out, driven crazy— But now my propped-up father Lifts his arm out of stillness at last. The light from the window strikes me And I turn as blue as a soul, 100 As the moment when I was born. I am not afraid for my fatherLook ! He is grinning; he is not Afraid for my life, either, As the wild engines stand at my knees Shredding their gears and roaring, And I hold each car in its place For miles, inciting its horn To blow down the walls of the world That the dying may float without fear In the bold blue gaze of my father. Slowly I move to the sidewalk With my pin-tingling hand half dead At the end of my bloodless arm. I carry it off in amazement, High, still higher, still waving, My recognized face fully mortal, Yet not; not at all, in the pale, Drained, otherworldly, stricken, Created hue of stained glass. I have just come down from my father. Drowning With Others 101 ...