I had often picked my mother up after her chemo treatments, but I had never seen one in progress. It is a brisk business. Needles and bags are efficiently hustled into place, as if it were not poison that is about to be put in the body. The nurses were funny and frank, though they’d just met my mother. As the drugs slid up the IV into her arm, we watched stolid barges plug up the Hudson like islands, the water silver in the haze. I read poems, and she asked me about poetry.

我經常接送她去進行化療，但我從沒有見過任何一個工作人員，這是使人感到輕松的一件事。針和藥水袋已經有效的固定好，好像只要沒有阻礙就將進入身體。護士們都很有趣坦白，盡管她們和我母親還是第一次見面。我們冷冷看著那藥水順著靜脈輸液針流入她的手臂，如同駁船像小島一樣堵住了哈德森河，模糊中似乎鍍上了銀色。我為她朗讀詩，她向我詢問如何讀懂詩。

“I don’t really understand it,” she said. “I never have. Do you think you could teach me to read a poem?”

I said that I could.

“我不是很理解，”她說，“我從沒有讀過。你認為你能教我讀懂一首詩嗎？”

我說我能。