In the orthopaedic ward

I brought so much here with me today,
so much I wanted to put down
as I walked into this hospital to find you:

the invisible wounds I carried,
and the way I’d invested in them
in order to be right about something, anything;

whatever I know about negotiating
for power or leverage;
the necessary ways of listening suspiciously
I learned from Marx and Freud and Nietzsche
and their beautiful, high-minded children;

the swaggering confidence that comes
from being the new thing, the bright, beautiful stranger
with the golden key that can unlock the castle –
that, that most of all.

Ah, but you know as well as I do
that you can’t put down your past or your learning –
can’t put down anything much at all.
And even so, I walked into that room
feeling lighter, estranged from my voice;
strange enough not to know
what to say, how to hold you.

And all I remember clearly of that visit
is the astonishment I felt –
my one hand gently holding your bionic knee,
softly humming a James Brown fragment to you –
slightly breathless, slightly out of tune:
“I feel good,
and I knew that I would.”

 - Jacques Coetzee