Each week, his shoulders hunched, his eyes pinched tight,
hastily stumbling, often tripping on the mat,
borne up by Nurse’s arm, an ugly, awkward sight,
the idiot makes his way toward the bath.
The clouds of vapor rising from the froth
begin to calm him down: white steam…
and with each piece of clothing that comes off
he settles deeper into an old, familiar dream.
And as the nurses gently lower him in,
he folds his skinny arms against his chest
and like a baby lifted to his mother’s breast,
he sighs, and curls his lips into a blissful grin.
His anxious face has now gone vacant and serene.
His skinny feet stick up like two pale flowers.
His pale and wizened legs seem full of youthful power,
half-visible, like trunks of birch trees in the green.
He drifts in this green water like an unborn child
who has not learned some fruits don’t ripen as they ought.
He has the wisdom of the body, undefiled,
and does not need to understand the ways of thought.
And when he’s taken out and wrapped up in a towel
and vigorously dried from head to toe
and feels them tugging on his stiff, hard clothes,
each week, he struggles and begins to howl.
And every week he is reborn once more
and cruelly wrested from his watery den,
and every week the same fate lies in store:
to have remained a frightened idiot once again.
