TWENTIETH CENTURY POEM
In the tendrils
of their care
I leaf and learn again.
Life's better for knowing
them
they're fun, down to earth, so young.
I may be mother, but now
I'm utterly dependent.
They wash me, change
me, talk to me,
wipe away the spills and tears
clean pin-sites, understand
but do not pander to my pain.
Every morning they
pile up pillows
to lift me higher,
an arm under each elbow
and one around my waist, until
a new patient, more
ill than me
under investigation
grabs their attention.
Like cattle at dusk
their faces
loom in the half-light, voices low
as they struggle with tubes and pumps
to save a life.
I'm left alone --
abandoned --
riding the rocking horse of jealousy
unable to understand anything
as violence envelops
and threatens to topple.
NINETEENTH CENTURY POEM
Blue-eyed
and bright of face but waning fast
Into
the sere of virginal decay,
I view
her as she enters, day by day,
As a
sweet sunset almost overpast.
Kindly
and calm, patrician to the last,
Superbly
falls her gown of sober grey,
And
on her chignon's elegant array
The
plainest cap is somehow touched with caste.
She talks Beethoven; frowns disapprobation
At Balzac's
name, sighs it at poor George Sand's;
Knows that she has exceedingly pretty hands;
Speaks Latin with a right accentuation;
And gives at need (as one who understands)
Draught,
counsel, diagnosis, exhortation.
