Bits of the grass I pulled I posted off
To one going into chemotherapy
And one who had come through. I didn't want
To leave the place or link up with the others.
It was mid-day, mid-May, pre-tourist sunlight
In the precincts of the god,
The very site of the temple of Asclepius.
I wanted nothing more than to lie down
Under hogweed, under seeded grass
And to be visited in the very eye of the day
By Hygeia, his daughter, her name still clarifying
The haven of light she was, the undarkening door.
IV
The room I came from and the rest of us all came from
Stays pure reality where I stand alone,
Standing the passage of time, and she's asleep
Section 4 represents a return to the speaker’s childhood as he recalls the intimate details of his memories, as in Section 1— the room, the doctor, the wedding sheets, his mother’s familiar Irish phrase. Some of his adult language remains in the eloquence and flow of this section, but he comes full circle back to his childhood sense of wonder at the birth.
Out of the Bag