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WONG PHUI NAMA Death in the WardThey had to change old Manickam three timesyesterday morning. Sunk among the dry sheetshe began to give up on the useless match-sticksof his legs. His people brought himOnly after they had foundthey could do nothing much about his spells of retching.All of his sixty-seven years were lockedinside his skull. Quite out of reach ...All day I dreamt fitfully, laid out in bed.The fluorescent lamps from their high ceilinghurt our eyes. We were clay-skinned; great deformed caterpillarssealed in the quiet of this public ward.The doctor told me I was down with jaundice.All head and squashed body,I dreamt I rose beating moth-like against the window panes.Is this six o'clock in the evening?When Manickam died in the night, they had no need to begentlewith his body. By the reading light they stripped his bed.It somehow crossed my mindthe contents of his stomach would be cold by the morning'sautopsy.In those small hours I saw I too had died,How should the body discard itself? How should the flesh letgo?Down there outside the darkened hospital groundsthey would just be letting the truck in with the day's suppliesAnd I wondered how much time there wasin the stale air of this ward, of used sanitary pans in the morningto think of the splendour of the breaking light at dawn,of the spirit newly risen.10WESTERLY, No.2, JUNE, 1989