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The Applicant
First, are you our sort of a person?
Do you wear
A glass eye, false teeth or a crutch,
A brace or a hook,
Rubber breasts or a rubber crotch,
Stitches to show something's missing? No, no?...
Man in the Street
Man in the Street
He claps a hand
across the gaping hole -
or else the sight might
well inside to
melt the mind (if any
thinking spoke
were in the wheel,
or any...
Fear
Fear
I fear the vast dimensions of eternity.
I fear the gap between the platform and the train.
I fear the onset of a murderous campaign.
I fear the palpitations caused by too much tea.
I...
Visiting Zomba Plateau
Visiting Zomba Plateau
Could I have come back to you to wince
Under the blur of your negatives,
To sit before braziers without the glow
Of charcoal, to cringe at your rivers
That without...
Thief
Thief
He will steal it, whatever you possess.
Whatever you value, what bears your name,
everything you call 'mine', he will steal.
Everything you have is frail and will be stolen from you.
...
Reflections on the Beast
Reflections on the Beast
I had trouble forming your picture last night.
A wind was blowing up from your grave.
It closed all windows with a crash.
It swirled and tossed across the hills.
I...
Mr Bleaney
Mr. Bleaney
'This was Mr Bleaney's room. He stayed
The whole time he was at the Bodies, till
They moved him.' Flowered curtains, thin and frayed,
Fall to within five inches of the sill,
...
Green Sees Things in Waves
Green Sees Things in Waves
Green first thing each day sees waves -
the chair, armoire, overhead fixtures, you name it,
waves - which, you might say, things really are,
but Green just lies there...
The Cool Web
Children are dumb to say how hot the day is,
How hot the scent is of the summer rose,
How dreadful the black wastes of evening sky,
How dreadful the tall soldiers drumming by,
But we have speech...
With Mercy for the Greedy
With Mercy for the Greedy
Concerning your letter in which you ask
me to call a priest and in which you ask
me to wear The Cross that you enclose;
your own cross,
your dog-bitten cross,...
First Song
First Song
Then it was dusk in Illinois, the small boy
After an afternoon of carting dung
Hung on the rail fence, a sapped thing
Weary to crying. Dark was growing tall
And he began to hear...
Four Morbid Songs - an extract
Four Morbid Songs
I learnt to love a body once,
dead a year, in pickling spirit.
It was my nearest friend.
Every other day I lifted back
the linen lid and unpacked
fitted things. The...
De Humani Corporis Fabrica
De Humani Corporis Fabrica
after Vesalius
I know the names of almost
nothing
not the bone
between my elbow and my wrist
that sometimes aches
from breaking
years ago...
Instruction
Instruction
Check: water, soap, a folded sheet, a shroud.
Close cubicle curtains; light's swallowed
in hospital green. Our man lies dense
with gravity: an arm, his head, at angles
as if...
Urban Lyric
Urban Lyric
The gaunt lady of the service wash
stands on the threshold and blinks in the sunlight.
Her face is yellow in its frizz of hair
and yet she smiles as if she were fortunate.
Parkinson's Disease
Parkinson's Disease
While spoon-feeding him with one hand
she holds his hand with her other hand,
or rather lets it rest on top of his,
which is permanently clenched shut.
When he turns...
Blankets
Blankets
The stuffy ground-floor bedroom
at the back of our flat. The bed,
covered with blue Witney blankets
bound with paler blue velvet.
Measles, scarlet fever,
influenza,...
Newly Born Twins
In separate incubators, one was dying.
Against doctor's orders, a nurse put them together.
The Strong twin, the one with nothing
pulling her back, she slung
her newly born arm over
the one...
'A perfect example of a paralysed larynx'
In the waiting-room we'd stared
for hours at the umbrella pine
in a painting someone had put there
to help us wait. The sky leaked
over the moor, the moor leaked its heather
over the frame...
In the theatre
In the theatre
'Only a local anaesthetic was given because of the blood pressure problem. The patient, thus, was fully awake throughout the operation. But in those days - in 1938, in Cardiff, when I was Lambert...
