Through the uncurtained window half the sky
Was blacked out over Middle Head
By scarps of thunderclouds; below,
The leaden waters were inhabited,
As ever, by the vessels that must ply
Their patterns, intricate as they were slow,
From far away. Then I

Turned back and changed that vision for the ward.
Nurses, as ever, came and went.
Small groups of relatives stood round
Their proper beds and by a mute consent
Were mutually and thoughtfully ignored.
Doctors with explanations to propound
And symptoms to record

Came also in their turn. A registrar
At last arrived and shone a light
Deep into her occluded eyes
To conjure back her person and her sight.
They looked at nothing in particular.
He asked her what she saw, and her replies
Were very faint and far.

‘Too bright,’ she said. The sky was out again,
Its heights of lapis copied by
The harbour, on whose sidling sheen
Were carried all the vessels that must ply
Their patterns. It never ends, this regimen –
Then does, as suddenly as fugue fourteen,
When Bach laid down his pen.