Sickness and Death

I wash my hands,
In water,
I wash my hands
In alcohol,
Nothing must escape me,
Nothing must enter.

Nurse, who is this fool before me?
This empty headed young one.
No pill, no incision will cure him,
No diet, no transplant, no transfusion
Will transform him.

He is stabilized, he is stabilized,
But for how long?
He mumbles something to himself
Shantith, Shantith, Shantith,
No I do not understand it,
I never took Latin.

The words seem
To have no meaning to him,
But he says them over and over again,
As if by saying it,
He could find something, that
The sound itself would liberate him.

"There is no shade,
No shade for me
Except right under
The old linden tree"

He sings, and I dream.
I dream of green fields,
Full of holes,
Full of germs, unsanitized
Lit by non-fluorescent light.
He is not tattooed
But has marks around his body,
He tells me there was a feeling
Locked inside, needing freeing.
Rubbish. He tells me to give him my hands,
And says that I am wonderful.