BLACKBIRD

Throughout the day relatives come and go
in the overheated room in which she lies,
where out-of-season hothouse ﬂowers compose
a still life. She is motionless. Her eyes
remain closed. Her visitors do not know
as they talk to her, whether she can hear.
They wonder if her fingers feel the anxious
fumbling tender messages of those
too lost for words. Is she at all conscious
of their anguish? Of her own pain, or fear?

At night her husband waves away these people
to keep a private vigil until dawn;
he wraps her snugly in the eiderdown,
then ﬂings the window wide for the first blackbird,
whose cool clarinet notes ﬂoat down from the apple
tree in the dew-washed garden; against despair,
against logic, he longs for her to hear it:
gulping music in with each gasp of air
that punches into his lungs, he oﬀers her
her last blackbird.

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