218: Tableau
“Tableau”
Judith Wright
Bent over, staggering in panic or despair
from post to parking-meter in the hurried street,
he seemed to gesture at me,
as though we had met again; had met somewhere
forgotten, and now for the last time had to meet.
And I debated with myself; ought I to go
over the road - since no one stopped to ask
or even stand and look -
abandon my own life a while and show
I was too proud to shirk that ant-like task?
And finally went. His almost vanished voice
accepted me; he gave himself to my hold,
(pain, cancer - keep me still).
We leaned on a drinking fountain, fused in the vice
of a double pain; his sweat dropped on me cold.
Holding him up as he asked till the ambulance came,
among the sudden curious crowd, I knew
his plunging animal heart,
against my flesh the shapes of his too-young bone,
the heaving pattern of his ribs. As still I do.
Warding the questioners, bearing his rack of weight,
I drank our strange ten minutes of embrace,
and watched him whiten there,
the drenched poverty of his slender face.
We could have been desperate lovers met too late.
Judith Wright
Bent over, staggering in panic or despair
from post to parking-meter in the hurried street,
he seemed to gesture at me,
as though we had met again; had met somewhere
forgotten, and now for the last time had to meet.
And I debated with myself; ought I to go
over the road - since no one stopped to ask
or even stand and look -
abandon my own life a while and show
I was too proud to shirk that ant-like task?
And finally went. His almost vanished voice
accepted me; he gave himself to my hold,
(pain, cancer - keep me still).
We leaned on a drinking fountain, fused in the vice
of a double pain; his sweat dropped on me cold.
Holding him up as he asked till the ambulance came,
among the sudden curious crowd, I knew
his plunging animal heart,
against my flesh the shapes of his too-young bone,
the heaving pattern of his ribs. As still I do.
Warding the questioners, bearing his rack of weight,
I drank our strange ten minutes of embrace,
and watched him whiten there,
the drenched poverty of his slender face.
We could have been desperate lovers met too late.