Sharon Olds - The Dead Body lyrics

I hated it, after he died, that we would sometimes leave him alone in the room. For months there had been someone with him, whether he was asleep or awake, in coma, someone, and now we would stand outside the door and he was alone—as if all we had cared about was his consciousness, this man who had so little consciousness, who was 90% his body. I hated the way we were treating him like garbage, we would burn him, as if only the soul mattered. Who was that, if not he, lying there dried and abandoned. I was ready to fight anybody who did not treat that body with respect, just let some medical students make a joke about his liver, I would deck them, I so wanted to have someone to deck, and if we were going to burn him, then I wanted this man burned whole, don't let me see that arm on anyone in Redwood City tomorrow, don't take that tongue in transplant or that unwilling eye. So what if his soul was gone, I knew him soulless all my childhood, saw him lying on the couch in the unlit end of the living room on his back with his mouth open and nothing there but his body. So I stood by him in the hospital and stroked him, touched his arm, his hair, I did not think he was there but this was the one I had known anyway, this man made of rich substance, this raw one, like those early beings who already lived on this earth before God took that special clay and made his own set of people.