When I came to see my friend in Redeemer
the patients called me by my occupation: Visitor.
Visitor, will you hang your coat on this high hook?
Visitor, would you like to share our food?
It was all soft: creamed corn, mashed potatoes,
gravy with no beef, apple sauce, lime jello.
Visitor, would you care to play our game?
They sat in a circle, each with a single card.
I demurred, I walked further in that vast building
connected by passageways and tunnels to vaster buildings.
What did I expect: a nurse, a doctor, a social worker,
someone I could consult, clearing my throat and smiling?
But no. Once an old man—was he older than me—pointed
at his name tag and asked: why do you have nothing?
An emaciated woman—but her face was a child’s—sat in a corner
weaving on a steel-frame loom, whispering to herself.
Absurdly I wondered, why are there no security guards?
These strangers were the gentlest I had ever encountered.
I kept moving. Corridors. Deserted kitchens. An auditorium.
On the walls hung portraits of those famous people—
actors, presidents—who exist on the edge of memory,
whose names you will remember the moment you leave,
when the cold stuns you and you realize how stale the air was:
not Greta Garbo, not Warren Harding, but almost, almost.
At last I found my friend, sitting by himself in a library
under a window that gave on a wall but shone with gray light.
He had a book in his lap and was crossing each word out.
When he saw me he smiled. How have you been, he asked.
How is your wife? Is your grandchild well? Are you happy?
Are you working? Oh no, I answered. I am just a visitor.
Snow melt still glinted on my lapel and he pointed and asked:
Is it winter in our city? The city with no name? Is it long ago?
—D. Nurkse
D. Nurkse’s recent books are A Country of Strangers (Knopf) and Haaled ule Vee (Eksa, Tallin, translated by Mart Valjataga).