Having Been Asked "What Is a Man?" I Answer

After Keats

My oldest son comes to visit me

in the hospital. He brings giant

peonies and the nurse puts them

in a glass vase, and they sag quietly

on the window sill where they

seem afraid to gaze out at the city

smoking beneath. He asks when I

will be coming home. I don't know.

He sees there are wires running

from me to a television set on which

my heartbeat is the Sunday Spectacular.

How do I look? I say. He studies

the screen and says, I don't know.

It takes a specialist to tell you how

you look in this place, and none will.

I must have slept, and when I waken

I am alone, and the old man

next to me is gone, and the room

is going dark. This is the Sunday

that will fill the unspoken promise

of all those vanished Sundays

when a shadow on the edge of sight

grew near, enormous, hesitated, and left,

and I sighed with weariness knowing

one more week was here to live.

At last a time and place to die are

given me, and even a small reason.

The flowers have turned now that

the windows have gone dark, and I

see their pale faces in the soft mirror

of the glass. No. They aren't crying

for this is not the vale of tears;

they are quietly laughing as flowers

always do in the company of men.

"Because this is the place where souls

are made" their laughter whispers.

I will read Keats again, I will rise

and go into the world, unwired and free,

because I am no longer a movie,

I have no beginning, no middle, no end,

no film score underscoring each act,

no costume department, no expert on color.

Iam merely a man dressing in the dark

because that is what a man is-

so many mouthfuls of laughter

and so many more, all there can be

behind the sad brown backs of peonies.

Structure

48 lines · 3 stanzas