Illness

Illness

by Victor Grauer

Illness is a kind of intoxication

In which you drink pure pain

Like a freezing glass of pure grain

Alcohol.  All your senses strain

Against a kind of ontological membrane --

If it breaks you die.


Slowly that psychological feeling like sky

Infuses the room where you lie

And your inmost you letting go

Presses itself against the dirty window

Where the dirt seems to form a kind of rainbow.


So few and so slow

Are the things you remember to know

As you fall behind

With lazy motions of the mind

And really begin to unwind.