A Dance at the Mental Hospital

Gwendolyn MacEwen

the imponderable agony
of being here, not just
in the dusty auditorium
smelling of drugs and lemonade
but in the world, alive,
and conscious, and alone
is what makes the dance so
strange.
(we are aware
someone has put us here,
no one was really invited.)
the steps will knit together
some wide wound
that life has made. some wear
the furious defiant face
of a baby first forced to breathe;
others, from behind the slow glazed
smiles try valiantly to please.
still others stare
and cast wild eyes upon this gathering.

I think of the tale about the madman who believed all
the horrors of the world were committed to a single rose in the
hospital garden, and who struggled night after night to
get our and destroy the rose, and finally did, with his
hands bloody from the bars. He was good and made as Christ,
and held the evil rose against his chest until he and it
both died at dawn.
the imponderable agony
of being here, of having
to have a shape, a foot, an ugly face,
a mind, a fit upon the floor
when the soul breaks out of the screeching teeth
and every nerve and muscle is screaming for release
but now they are dancing, ah, slow as a nightmare
dances in the night across stale beds
beneath impossible stars (will there
be secret trysts tonight upon those sour stairs?)

I too must clutch the world's most beautiful and evil rose
against my chest and stare,
and cast wild eyes upon this gathering.

Carol Wilson