CANCER PATIENT

CANCER PATIENT

The television documentary film will be here long after he is gone. He is scarcely more than a boy yet haggard, unshaven, (his face contorted with a pain that will cease only when he ceases) does not mind this record of suffering being .q33his sole posterity; does not mind the watchers at home

(even in some unimaginable future where he is not) seeing the tears spring to his eyes as his tumorous legs are probed and tested; does not even mind the impassive lens, depthless as the Eye of God: minds though to cup both hands over his crotch, clasping the sheets,

holding this last vestigial scrap of modesty (the insignificant exposure of a common manhood) to be of an importance with his life.

While at home we smile, involuntarily perhaps, of a sudden glimpsing only what is ours; even as we glimpse (in his eyes sudden depthlessness) the ultimate exposure which will be ours yet.