You write that you are ill, confused. The trees

Outside the window of the room they gave you

Are wet with tears each morning when they wake you

Out of the sleep you never quite fall into.

There is this dream of traffic in your head

That stops and goes, and goes, and does not stop

Sometimes all night, all day. The motorcade

Winds past you like the funeral cortège

Of someone famous you had slept with, once or twice.

(Another fit of tears dampens the leaves, the page.)

You would expose your wounds, pull down your blouse,

Unbosom yourself wholly to the young doctor

Who has the power to sign prescriptions, passes,

Who seems to like you … And so to pass

Into the city once again, one of us,

Hurrying by the damp trees of a park

Towards a familiar intersection where

The traffic signals warn you not to cross,

To wait, just as before, alone—but suddenly

Ten years older, tamed now, less mad, less beautiful.