Jacques Coetzee
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, 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 the 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,
humming James Brown to you under my breath,
slightly breathless, slightly out of tune:
“I feel good,
And I knew that I would.”
Featured on 15 April 2021