Green Room
They had, one would guess, brought the helicopter
in on account of hope that all was not irrevocably
lost on the office kitchen floor, that resuscitation amid
coffee pot shards by strangers in paramedic yellow coats
was merely Step One to Sitting Up, altogether again
with working heart, inflatable lungs, apologetic
about all the fuss, the broken cup, shattered carafe,
assurances, once he caught a second wind,
he’d replace the wrong done. One of them had to laugh,
and his laugh let the others smile about whose mouth
had saved his mouth and Cancel-The-Medi-Vac jocularity
might have been the way, instead of hopeless rotors
lifting him off to that hopeless place where staff
awaited their turns to emote - from Chaplain
to ER nurse, attending physician (He Who
Pronounced) - their audience was me.
White jackets, green scrubs, suffocating.
A rehearsed Gravity as if sympathetic, they began
to inform (as they should; as this part is in their Job
Descriptions), this mute, this CPR Dummy who
stands on thick legs, sand-filled (Widows Wobble
But They Don’t Fall Down) chest, a bomb wired
to the aorta, ticking, ticking. Seven
thousand nights ago, in a green staging room
where no natural light finds the dark. And two doors away,
him - no apologies/assurances, no promises made.
.
[from The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, Edited and Translated by Stephen Mitchell, "Washing the Corpse" p.63]
