Prayer, In a Hospital
Dear God … let him play games
For a little while, yet!
Let his hands curve to a hockey stick
And the thrust of a canoe paddle.
Let him dive like a young arrow
Into clean water.
But, dear God
Let him play games! …
I have been to a Military Hospital.
I have talked to Mike …
Mike isn't much older.
His two boots hang at the foot of his bed.
Two carefully "dubbined" boots.
But Mike doesn't need two boots.
He just had a leg taken off.
He was cut down at Dieppe.
He was fourteen months in prison camp in
Germany.
"O, yes … they looked after us good enough —
But they had to tend their own wounded, first…
And there were so damn many of us!"
I talked to John,
After I got over the first shock.
John has both arms off… well above the elbow.
They call him "Arms" in the hospital ward.
It's sort of a grim… institutional joke.
John has an eye out, too —
The new glass one doesn't match his own eye.
"Are you married… or single… John?"
I managed.
"Single," he said … "Oh yes, … single."
He said it, thankfully,
Like a l-o-n-g sigh —
Like the sigh a child gives
Who has cried himself to sleep.
A hand grenade exploded in John's two hands.
It was the last thing he'll ever hold - in his
two hands!