The first one-third of a litre
Is in the body
Another third is to follow
In thirty minutes or so
I am reading Refusing Heavens
Poems by Jack Gilbert
How can we not
Compare our own lives
Think of good and bad times
Though most are melancholic nostalgia
For what, in all probability
We never truly shared in the first place
The hospital process is new to me
Though hardly an adventure
Although my brother told me
He thought afterwards he could climb Everest
He was a mechanic
Then he taught accountancy
Yet he has offered a medical certainty
In a way which no one else quite achieved
Jack, in his poem Kunstkammer
Says: but the heart is different
It never forgets
You may feel, my body’s definitive reaction
