ODE TO CECILIA
Your yellow face from a white enamel chair
at the foot of your bed on the ward at City Hospital
quavered its endless mantra: dooWAHD dooWAIN
that held the patience of your white inferno;
your voice accessed a few bytes of mind
still there in the wreckage of a head crash.
Since they plumped up your lungs, walked you twice a day,
you may for all I know still be crying: dooWAHD dooWAIN.
Your cry perfects you, placed at every point
of eternity and ubiquity, a universe
of superstrings in constant harmony,
saint martyred for your music: dooWAHD dooWAIN.
And I, mucking in that rubble of many years ago,
my first faith, first marriage, first career,
the birth of my first daughter,
remember you, cry Cecilia, Cecilia: dooWAHD dooWAIN.