A Face
The
idea of taking a dead person's face and putting it on someone else…
−
Peter Butler, Royal Free Hospital, London
The
incision apes the hairline
neatly to the neck, a peel
of sub-cretaceous fats,
candy-floss vessels
disengaged from bony mantle,
a sacrifice, to gods
who no longer know us from ourselves.
These
others as we, dreamers in their comas
never waking, knowingly
to
that first, remembered life that separates them,
name
by name, to cold sweat, the monitor’s flat sign,
in
their gift
a face chewed featureless
now righted, recognised.
What is possible is
possible,
to teach these variants as
they grew −
strangers in our lives,
behind each breath
the greasy ellipsis of
self-doubt.
The man you were, the face
in the mirror: there you are.
Here I am.
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