The Big Picture

Outside, we know there is traffic, we have come from there.
In here they are immune. There is no weather either, only
the bathe and hum of a constant temperature, the unwavering fluorescent light.

Walking past each room is like peering into a display at an aquarium:
furniture placed the way rocks are used—that awkward, natural touch.
There’s the feel of a warehouse, shadows with the drapery of drop-sheets,
which spread at their hem like water slowly creeping, sopping up the light.

Mostly you notice photographs, in ranks, by which the fortunate assert
they’re not alone. And everywhere little clutter abets the lie,
bits and pieces, stuff—as if they’re stemming a dyke. But it collapses:
the neglected meal, the zimmer frame in the corner
like a patient visitor. The birthday card from the staff.

Walking the corridor (umbilical to the world from which you’ve descended)
is like accompanying a slow version of Muybridge’s images.
From each room, in a corner, a flat screen flickers with
the same daytime soap opera. Flick, flick, as you pass,

all that glossy youth, polished like apples, gorgeous breasts
filling this room, and the next. The volume’s up high as if each plays
to an empty cinema. Their audience dozes, gapes.
They’ve the substance of twisted sheets.

Their bodies like reefs exposed at low tide, they slip submarine,
beyond the comfort of the light in which we stand,
as if we are at the end of a jetty looking into the seductive depth,
and find ourselves speaking a little too loudly

as if calling for them to return.