Now in the night I wake to it:

plucking of a cello string,

low hoot of wind in a deep cave,

song of wrongness sounding,

            sounding.
The hand is unmarred to look at,

paragon of itself, sweet in sleep

as a small bald mouse

curled in the nest of its mother.

Nothing hurts it. But oh,

             it hurts.

Someone is crying for help

in a locked house; I cannot get in.
In the hallway mirror I see

the slumped back, fattish neck, arm

dangled like a butchered fowl.

What fool left me here

in charge of this body?
All the world put away in its box

but us: the body and I. What to do but sit

and wait, in the mesh-curtained streetlight,

by the grey quiet

            of the television, the shapes

of the dirty glasses.

Sit! Are we not a good dog? The hand

inert in our lap: look what we’ve fetched. Surely

the master comes back for us

by morning.