From "Olga Poems" - Denise Levertov (1923-1997)

 

iv

On your hospital bed you lay

in love, the hatreds

that had folowed you, a

comet’s tail, burned out

as your disasters bred of love

burned out,

while pain and drugs

quarreled like sisters in you –

lay afloat on a sea

of love and pain – how you always

loved that cadence ‘Underneath

are the everlasting arms’ –

all history

burned out, down

to the sick bone, save for

that kind candle.

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