Читать книгу The Anti-Grief - Marianne Boruch - Страница 12

Wound

I found a paper ruler made

to measure one exact. Up to six inches or

in centimeters, take your pick.

A little worn and bent

in one place. Now on a shelf on its

calibrated edge. Imagine

the ambulance, an EMT close, reading

tiny print. Discard

after single use. And I wonder

if shattered glass and smoking engine

got in the way of rescue, whether

the wound one inch or two, if the jagged fleshy depth

really a trapdoor the spirit took

to leave the body for good.

I have a kit in my car, a zippered black bag of

bandages and ointment, a knife, scissors in there,

and inexplicitly, rope—what else—

Endless gauze. A waterfall of gauze, a frozen field

of gauze but soft, the opposite of chain mail

knights wore into battle, told

sure, every fight is noble. But even history forgets

why oh why oh why.

Blood-rush. Garish shock of

alive! escape! An ambulance fact sheet says

abridgment, says a complete

exorcism—did I read that right?—of exposed edges.

Bleeding, stop. Wound, begin to close—

Promise and threat go on because one

has to prophesy

to make any sense of tragedy.

I take the point: beware. Clots can, keep doing,

and infection knows the best place.

In a street, in the dark, under gaslights at 2 a.m.—

Those 19th-century engravings, low voices.