The Hospital Window

I have just come down from my father.Higher and higher he liesAbove me in a blue lightShed by a tinted window.I drop through six white floorsAnd then step out onto pavement.

Still feeling my father ascend,I start to cross the firm street,My shoulder blades shining with allThe glass the huge building can raise.Now I must turn round and face it,And know his one pane from the others.

Each window possesses the sunAs though it burned there on a wick.I wave, like a man catching fire.All the deep-dyed windowpanes flash,And, behind them, all the white roomsThey turn to the color of Heaven.

Ceremoniously, gravely, and weakly,Dozens of pale hands are wavingBack, from inside their flames.Yet one pure pane among theseIs the bright, erased blankness of nothing.I know that my father is there,

In the shape of his death still living.The traffic increases around meLike a madness called down on my head.The horns blast at me like shotguns,And drivers lean out, driven crazy—But now my propped-up father

Lifts his arm out of stillness at last.The light from the window strikes meAnd I turn as blue as a soul,As the moment when I was born.I am not afraid for my father—Look! He is grinning; he is not

Afraid for my life, either,As the wild engines stand at my kneesShredding their gears and roaring,And I hold each car in its placeFor miles, inciting its hornTo blow down the walls of the world

That the dying may float without fearIn the bold blue gaze of my father.Slowly I move to the sidewalkWith my pin-tingling hand half deadAt the end of my bloodless arm.I carry it off in amazement,

High, still higher, still waving,My recognized face fully mortal,Yet not; not at all, in the pale,Drained, otherworldly, stricken,Created hue of stained glass.I have just come down from my father.

From Drowning with Others (1962)