The body lies on a steel table

All around it people stand

Scrubbing, cleaning, harvesting

As in fruits from an orchard.

Enbalmed and disarmed

I see you as you saunter off

Your hands in your pockets

Whistling a familiar chord

I know the smell of death, I think

That stench of rot

And formaldehyde

That refuses to wash off.

Words I thought I never would hear,

Spoken to cleave the soul

The cadaver floats away

In a sea of faces long gone

“This is how it is”, you smile

Refusing to acknowledge my pain,

“This is the way of the world, see?

All of life is an illusion, your cares in vain.”

Are these then illusions too?

Those hands I hold in mine?

Your voice calling to me in the dark

Across gurneys abandoned by time?

My hands now man the oars

“A little to the left”, you used to say

“both hands must pull together

If you want to go straight”.

So am I going straight?

My hands have unequal power

Water leaks from eyes

That told you I would never cry.

But cry I did. Like a child,

Like man whose roof is snatched

In the middle of a storm.

I stand where I always stood.

Here in this room

Naked in my aloneness

With you in my head for company

And the dead body I visit again and again.

In the cold hospital room

Where time stands still.

And I wait for you to speak.

To my restless soul.