Giuseppe Ugesi, prisoner at Milowitz
in Austria, is up to his chin in linen sheets,
strapped upright on a hospital cot, with his head
swaddled in gauze to cushion
a swollen cauliflower ear.
Bristles from sunken black sutures
pock his broken aquiline nose,
only a stub remains where his best arm was--
the ghost of which keeps twitching
a finger at a veering cranefly.
He coughs, relieves a cheekful of sputum,
rasps in a gravelly voice for water.
The dark hollows of his eyes flash out
an image of where three roads meet
near Timisoara, where an ambulance caught fire,
the march through droning of cicadas, to here
where his lungs will fill with serum
and collapse, a dam burst that will bring him
to a deeper sleep than counting sheep.
At last, he parts his lips to form a kiss
for all of us who wait for him to speak.