His body had been parked in a wheelchair
and he was fiddling with a cigarette,
concentrating hard
on which end he should light it.
She seemed to have no spine.
The top of her had slipped
down to her waist in large bulges
and because of the angle of her head
she was looking at the world from underneath.
A middle-aged man with eyes slit
because of a chromosome too many
walked joyfully past me
chewing the inside of his toothless mouth.
A young man
with the gait of a toddler
ran up to a bewildered woman
and waved a happy hello in her face.
Another had stuck his head
into the open window of a car
and was talking
to the driver seated inside.
And one woman
who was not getting very far at all
stood motionless
with the look of someone
whose thoughts
had also ground to a halt.
They had all been released
for their Sunday afternoon stroll,
from an institute
for the mentally challenged
across the road.
