Each day after breakfast the old man comes to the hospital

with the morning paper and a Gladstone bag full of shaving gear. 
His son is dying, the nurse tells you — a tumour on the brain.

One night, from across the aisle on your own bed, you will glimpse 
in the arc of a flashlight his newly bandaged head and ashen skin

before the soft drum of feet and ring of winding curtains. 
But every morning the old man brings the newspaper his son

will be the first to open and seats him in his dressing gown 
in a chair on the concrete floor of the courtyard and listens

while his son reads out some piece of news and the father 
quietly shuffles around him and in one unbroken motion,

drapes a thick cotton towel over his shoulders and chest 
and dips a shaving brush into a mug of hot water. You can

tell the old man has done this many times in other places 
but now this time is the only time. Now there is only

pale winter sun on a sandstone wall and the background hum 
of general ward 10 as an old man strokes a cake of soap

into shiny white foam he brushes onto his son’s fresh stubble 
then stands with his arms by his side as they share a quiet joke

and then, with one hand lightly cupping his son’s jaw, bends towards 
his upturned face with the whetted edge of a thin curled blade

while the lather still glistens on his skin.