TWO VIEWS OF AN OLD WOMAN’S LEG
She sprained it, climbing the steps the other day,
and your long legs sit down some way I never could sit
to unwrap the Ace bandage. What color is the pain?
Yellow. See YELLOW. All up and down it. See YELLOW.
And I look at that leg, that once went dancing,
swollen, pitting, the skin thin and hairless,
see the sludged arteries, the muscles shrunken,
that soon will not be walking, nor its owner.
But power flows out of your long lithe hands
into that leg seeing yellow, just now spiting
the mocking robe of Tyrian purple and logwood:
she sees her pain yellow, in your hands, she walks on it.