Apiary viii (For the ones

who line the corridors and sit

silent in wheelchairs

before the television with the volume off,

whose cares

are small and gray and infinite,

time as ever to be faced    ...

Methuselahs the nurses wash

and dress without haste —

none needed    ...

this one has drunk from the poppy-cup

and drowses in her world of  dream    ...

Heliotrope,

carnations, wakeful violets, and lilies in vases —

masses of  flowers — wrap

the urine-and-antiseptic air in lace    ...

Please wake up; it is morning;

robins whistle; the bees dance.

Isn't this other one listening

from her shell of  silence,

and shouldn't she smile at the green return

and dappled light through windows?

As earth orbits the corridor

clocks are wound    ...

The last hour is a song or wound    ...

Except in this corridor — mother's —

where finity's brainless wind

blows ash, and ash again

blows through their cells:

So much silence, so little to say in the end.)