Hospital table number eleven

Table number eleven in the hospital,

how many years it has stood there, nobody knows.

How many people it has served, nobody keeps count;

how much it has witnessed, nobody understands.

Table number eleven in the hospital.

*

It has watched people arrive, one after another,

and watched them leave, one after another,

some walking out well, some carried out as bodies.

Yet it was there then, and it is there still,

and it may yet watch more people’s fates take shape.

*

Table number eleven in the hospital

has heard the poor crying out in pain on the floor,

and heard the rich roaring from their private rooms;

heard the dying beg to come back to life just once more,

and heard the imaginings of those set on ending it all.

*

Table number eleven in the hospital,

witness to everything, and yet it kept only its silence;

in people’s joys and sorrows it served without a sound,

and without their knowing became the companion of all their stories.