Waiting In The Children's Hospital - Clarence Major

I reflect on this desperate note
while waiting in the children's hospital.
The desperate cry my son left
cold as ice in his closed eyes after poison.

Benches of blood. This is a wooden tragedy.

Joyce & I walked home under the huge night
thru a grand sweep and
around midnight I scribble a letter to my sister,
who is dying five minutes at a time:
            You are the flower of confusion
            coming up in the morning
            of my love and
            going tightly shut in the afternoon of
            anger. Anger & bitterness.
                                         I look forward to your resurrection.

 I get up tonight and walk naked
through the wet weeds. The moon is smiling
and it has no teeth.

I walk home less, the huge night in me.

I remember a trillion stars in the Lexington night
above all shadows ahead of me but
I cannot remember the feeling
of a little girl's kiss.       Do you remember?

I remember I walked to town with a blind
man beside me singing or was he humming.

That same summer of a trillion grasshoppers. And
I loved him through & beyond his blackness.
His woman in a shack beside the highway
with four grandbabies in a wooden bed;
fanning summer flies from the syrup on their lips.

But the blood is white this summer.

Roasted ears. The hog season & my uncle
with a good shot. The blood is red this summer
redder than redbirds.

I felt that I had to go along in silence
with the heart of a monk, face flat to the earth
arms outstretched. & when I got up
I walked close to walls.
I moved with my head low and my hands hidden
like a starved Christian, meaning
to do this forever.


[From:
Major, C. (1970) Swallow the lake. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, p41 - p42]

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