Metaphor

"At the Hospital" by David Ferry

David Ferry is an acclaimed English poet and translator. After returning from the air force to complete his degree at Amherst College he began writing poems.

At the Hospital

She was the sentence the cancer spoke at last,
Its blurred grammar finally clarified.

This short, yet meaningful poem, is filled with surprise and irony. The poem alludes to a death that was long coming and has already happened. The quickness and brevity of this poem adds to the poem making it more powerful in contrast to the long coming death. In this poem, the speaker is not a human but rather a "sentence spoken." This is ironic because the human is not in control, but rather controlled. The poem implies that life is so short and precious and the moment of death can be so precise. The poem as a whole is compared to a book, but the deceased person is compared to a final sentence of a book. The final sentence of a book usually clarifies facts that we are unsure of, which is something that typically pleases us. However, in this instance, clarity is a cause for remorse. The tone of this poem is very candid, or matter-of-fact.