500
PARTISAN REVIEW
They have merely sunk or drifted past their prime:
Each body is a little overweight,
Regular exercise would have done it no great harm;
There is alcoholic content in its blood,
This one is deaf, the other is half-blind,
Another has a scar on its right side
And still another lacks an index ·finger
Which is sad, but each can be beautifully repaired,
Therapy works wonders for such common ills.
They could weave baskets, or model images in clay,
Dye wool, or trace a pattern on a loom,
Or even kalsomine the clinic walls-
Each could be salvaged and each one could earn
A minimum of fifty cents a day."
But I had my way; I restored them as they were,
Each in the closet as though sitting in a ' bar,
Friendly, about to speak:
One looked like a school teacher with a glass eye,
Another like a teller in a bank,
Another like a sailor, reefed and spent
On an East River barge, one like a millionaire
Who had been reported missing for a week;
And the last with his smile rolled upward to the ceiling
Might have been a Correspondent in the First World War.
Like one possessed, I sat down among them to hear them talk,
The door closed quietly and the night was dark:
I felt the cold, stilled air against my face,
I knew the danger, I knew how deeply
Sleep flows among the dead, how straight, how far
The unseen distance falls, my body shaking
And held upon a narrow ledge,
my limbs were shadows.
I awoke to throbbing airdromes in the sky,
The nurse above me said:
"You must lie quiet,
You have been telling me secrets for days, for hours,
