Grace is the law of the descending movement. 

                                                — Simone Weil
 

A cry bursts like a wing-beat.   
    
Among clicks and whirrs of language
your voice comes and goes, 
scraps mailed from a hospital bed.

Is this our 
                   destination?  
    
It’s called a journey
but you’re not looking for something,
you don’t want to arrive 
here 
         in the cubicle dark 
there 
          at the end 
beyond the night-lit corridor.

At dusk, mist rises from the river:

the green ball
in the drip-feed
lets only a little   
pass.

Let’s go to the very edge, 
to the darkness 
where the windows are floating their little boats.

Your illness
is a kind of pact;
to bear it
is to bear even death
in this name — love.

 
Past midnight, I lean against the wall  
to let a trolley pass:

it’s always the same face on display,
twin cheekbones 
raising the skin like tent poles,
your nostrils 
                       dark 
with the promise of air.

This is the river we dream about 
                                                          and dread.

Once, we saw an eel
caught by a heron,
the bird drinking it down
as if it were a
          black river.

Listen — 

rippling polished lino, here it comes,  
the wounding sound 

in the corridor’s throat — 
it’s your shout 

bursting the darkness open.

A giant listening    
lies in my chest,
swelling      
with the sound of your voice. 

I’m walking the corridor
as if there were something to count;
as if tiles spelt clues
       or numbers.
They slide away
                     behind me. 

Even as I tighten my hold 
you’re disappearing; 
you telescope
into your own black centre.
Is this it?
   All the love-feast
this salty
drip-feed?

The loneliness of your naked body
in front of the doctors and their equipment
uncovers me.        

I feel the river’s long cold on my skin

as you become unknown 
even to yourself,
going on ticking and beating into the unknown

where you fight or yield; 
                                             obey
as oxygen detonates your lungs,
                                                          the catheter
milks your bladder — 
or drown.  

Is anything beautiful
left in the world?

You’ve placed fear on my finger.
A ringed river-bird.

The river’s an underground music —  

Draw the curtain.
Beds fill, 
empty and fill
through the blank of recovery. 

Is there any music 
to justify this?

Take me back to the midsummer river
hidden under brush,
the sly trickle of meaning.

                                                Your fear 
and mine:
a verse with no answer.
 
Knee, hip, shoulder:
in the window’s mirror
look 
at the body 
floating up 
to the surface of the night.