Context

To enter the ward is to renounce all other meanings – 
a stroke of luck           as if fortune
were the small change silver of lightning, 

renounce too the brushstrokes of your
loping signature            the name
you can no longer sign, pen flailing from the line, 

renounce swimming, renounce front crawl 
(though - truly - you never learned
looked at lochs as if they were slabs)
 
forget how you held a cricket bat
summers in Lancashire.      under shandy-weak sun 
and waited for the world to barrel at you 

so you could strike it
strike      which is stroke’s derivation 
German streichen, the stroke of God’s hand 

as if some great force slapped you down
so why do I stand            in the aftermath 
of this violence, this decisive blow
 
wanting only to caress
the almost-blondness            of your parted hair 
to be still                    with you?