Saratoga Ending

1.

        Iron, sulphur, steam: the wastes

        Of all resorts like this have left their traces.

        Old canes and crutches line the walls. Light

        Floods the room, stripped from the pool, broken

        And shimmering like scales. Hidden

        By curtains, women dry themselves

        Before the fire and review

        The service at hotels,

        The ways of dying, ways of sleep,

        The blind ataxia patient from New York,

        And all the others who were here a year ago.

    2.

    Visconti, mad with pain. Each day,

    Two hundred drops of laudanum. Hagen, who writhes

    With every step. The Count, a shrunken penis

    And a monocle, dreaming of horses in the sun,

    Covered with flies.—Last night I woke in sweat

    To see my hands, white, curled upon the sheet

    Like withered leaves. I thought of days

    So many years ago, hauling driftwood up from the shore,

    Waking at noon, the harbor birds following

    Boats from the mainland. And then no thoughts at all.

    Morphine at five. A cold dawn breaking. Rain.

3.

I lie here in the dark, trying to remember

What my life has taught me. The driveway lights blur

In the rain. A rubber-tired metal cart goes by,

Followed by a nurse; and something rattles

Like glasses being removed after

A party is over and the guests have gone.

Test tubes, beakers, graduates, thermometers—

Companions of these years that I no longer count.

I reach for a cigarette and my fingers

Touch a tongue depressor that I use

As a bookmark; and all I know

Is the touch of this wood in the darkness, remembering

The warmth of one bright summer half a life ago—

A blue sky and a blinding sun, the face

Of one long dead who, high above the shore,

Looked down on waves across the sand, on rows of yellow jars

In which the lemon trees were ripening.