SONGS IN A HOSPITAL

My soul is a dark ploughed field

In the cold rain;

My soul is a broken field

Ploughed by pain.

Where windy grass and flowers

Were growing,

The field lies broken now

For another sowing.

Great Sower, when you tread

My field again,

Scatter the furrows there

With better grain.

Out of the window a sea of green trees

Lift their soft boughs like arms of a dancer;

They beckon and call me, “Come out in the sun!”

But I cannot answer.

I am alone with Weakness and Pain,

Sick abed and June is going,

I cannot keep her, she hurries by

With the silver-green of her garments blowing.

Men and women pass in the street

Glad of the shining sapphire weather;

But we know more of it than they,

Pain and I together.

They are the runners in the sun,

Breathless and blinded by the race,

But we are watchers in the shade

Who speak with Wonder face to face.