Slowly the women file to where he
Upright in rimless glasses, silver hair,
Dark suit, white collar.
Stewards
Persuade them onwards to his voice and hands,
Within whose warm spring rain of loving
Each dwells some twenty seconds.
Now, dear child,
What's wrong, the deep American voice demands,
And, scarcely pausing, goes into a
Directing God about this eye, that knee.
Their heads are clasped abruptly; then,
Like losing thoughts, they go in silence;
Sheepishly stray, not back into their
Just yet; but some stay stiff, twitching and
With deep hoarse tears, as if a kind of
And idiot child within them still
To re-awake at kindness, thinking a
At last calls them alone, that hands have
To lift and lighten; and such joy
Their thick tongues blort, their eyes squeeze grief, a
Of huge unheard answers jam and rejoice -What's wrong!
Moustached in flowered frocks they shake:
By now, all's wrong.
In everyone there sleepsA sense of life lived according to love.
To some it means the difference they could
By loving others, but across most it
As all they might have done had they been loved.
That nothing cures.
An immense slackening ache,
As when, thawing, the rigid landscape weeps,
Spreads slowly through them - that, and the voice
Saying Dear child, and all time has disproved.
