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.

我经常接送她去进行化疗，但我从没有见过任何一个工作人员，这是使人感到轻松的一件事。针和药水袋已经有效的固定好，好像只要没有阻碍就将进入身体。护士们都很有趣坦白，尽管她们和我母亲还是第一次见面。我们冷冷看着那药水顺着静脉输液针流入她的手臂，如同驳船像小岛一样堵住了哈德森河，模糊中似乎镀上了银色。我为她朗读诗，她向我询问如何读懂诗。

“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，”她说，“我从没有读过。你认为你能教我读懂一首诗吗？”

我说我能。