Excerpt of Nights of 1990

"The sweatings and the fevers stop, the throat that was unsound is
sound, the lungs of the consumptive are resumed...."
-Walt Whitman, "The Sleepers"
1.

What I could not accept was how much space
his body was taking with it: for instance, the space where
I was standing, the dazed fluorescence of his hospital room
where each night I watched him sleep. So this
is the spine, I thought, this articulation
of vertebral tumors, this rope of bulbous knots;
tissue, I thought, as I studied his yellowing skin-
tissue, like something that could tear.
Afterward, I waited in the corridor.
When I came back, he was alive and breathing.
Here, let me rub your back, I said.
Was it true what I'd heard, that the soul resides in breath?
Was it true the body was mere transport? I untied
the white strings that secured his pale blue
hospital gown. The blue gown drifted
from his shoulders. I rubbed his back.
I rubbed his back. Not so hard,
he said. I don't need to be burnished yet.


From GHOST LETTERS (Alice James Books, 1994)

 

Poems by Richard McCann

 Excerpt of Nights of 1990

Third Premonition: rue des Petits Hôtels

Ghost Letter