On a chair by his bed lay a copy of Hamlet, his favourite Shakespearean play. I picked it up, read in it, waiting for him to wake, while he breathed laboriously.
I became absorbed in the play ... I must write a poem, some time, called "Hamlet's Last Soliliquy."
My father was awake.
I did not know how long he had been so, for his breathing had not changed and the only difference from his sleeping state was that his eyes stared, wide and glassy, at the ceiling, as if they comprehended nothing.
A feeling of horror crept over my body. This was more than I had counted on.. my father, helpless on his back and his wits off gathering wool....
"Father!" I put my hand on a talon of his.
He turned his head slightly. Smiled vacuously.
"Father!"
A perturbation clouded his eyes ... that painful struggle toward comprehension observed in an infant's face.