"AIDS" by Bob Hicok

Wow, this is a really powerful poem. Here is a wonderful example of how a poem can tell you everything in the title. But I guess it wasn't everything. We know the poem is about AIDS, but we don't know that the author, or I guess I should say, the narrator, isn't close with his parents. We don't know from the title that he has been loved, has held the hand of someone "whose weaknesses" he'd "never betrayed" (316). But, without the title, we could only guess. Some of my favorite lines in this poem have to do with the stars--beautiful imagery that is juxtaposed with the unhappy, unsuportave family of a dying man. Lines such as "We looked at the stars come out / in bunches, in leaps and swirls, / and I could say nothing" (316). How is the world so beautiful but so cold at the same time?