[Intro]
[Instrumentation: prepared piano plays a slow three-note figure with long spaces]

[Verse 1]
Arthur kept a photograph
Folded underneath his glass:
Summer grass and Sunday clothes,
A woman laughing through a rose.
He asked me twice to lower the blind,
Then asked me what I hoped to find.
I said, “The morning, if it comes.”
He smiled and tapped his wedding thumb.

[Chorus]
Bed Nine is empty, sheets pulled tight,
A square of white beneath the light.
Bed Nine is empty, curtain drawn—
The room remains, but Arthur’s gone.
No trumpet called, no doorway shone;
The monitor stopped and carried on.

[Verse 2]
At four fourteen the east wing rang,
A child had fallen, metal clanged.
At four fifteen June called my name—
Bed Seven’s pressure fell again.
At four sixteen I crossed the floor,
At four seventeen I reached his door.
His hand was open by the glass,
As if one minute still might pass.

[Chorus]
Bed Nine is empty, sheets pulled tight,
A square of white beneath the light.
Bed Nine is empty, curtain drawn—
The room remains, but Arthur’s gone.
No trumpet called, no doorway shone;
The monitor stopped and carried on.

[Cello Solo]
[Instrumentation: cello bends the monitor motif downward while the drums remain silent]

[Bridge]
The form provides a narrow line:
“Time pronounced” and “cause defined.”
It does not ask whose voice he heard,
Or whether silence was the word.

[Second Bridge]
It does not hold the wedding rose,
The summer field, the Sunday clothes.
It leaves no space to write instead:
“He should not have been alone in bed.”

[Verse 3]
I wash his face and comb his hair,
Place the photograph beside him there.
His wedding ring has worn a trace,
A silver river round its place.
I phone a number marked “My Anne,”
And hear a kettle, then a hand.
She says, “Was someone there at last?”
I shut my eyes before I answer.

[Final Chorus]
Bed Nine is empty, sheets pulled tight,
But absence will not stay polite.
Bed Nine is empty, yet his name
Moves through the pipes, the lifts, the rain.
I say, “I’m sorry. He was not alone.”
I stayed too late to make it true.

[Outro]
[Instrumentation: chapel organ enters beneath the final piano chord]

The photograph waits by the glass.
Summer refuses to become past.