160 Illness poems

And accustomed ungentle hands of two blue-uniformed attendants wrap the patient in suffering’s white bed gown sewn with bright invisible emblems of virtues, or pinned with them, as with fraternity pins, or mosaic pins, meaning travel. Has he always only just arrived? Really suffering, within and without his head burn hot wires of pain: “I cannot bear this”: and does, and does the time and place outwardly expound what is within? To be well, to wear new clothes, to decimate his wage for a necktie, a scarf or gloves, love “your magic spell” scabbed his fevered lips, lay no cold cloths, though to be him bent on him eyes of those called to selflessness, lonely for more selfish days.

Last time I fell in a shower room I bled like a tumbril dandy and the hotel longed to be rid of me. Taken to the town clinic, I described how I tripped on a steel rim and found my head in the wardrobe. Scalp-sewn and knotted and flagged I thanked the Frau Doktor and fled, wishing the grab-bar of age might be bolted to all civilization and thinking of Rome’s eighth hill heaped up out of broken amphorae. When, anytime after sixty, or anytime before, you stumble over two stairs and club your forehead on rake or hoe, bricks or fuel-drums, that’s the time to call the purveyor of steel pipe and indoor railings, and soon you’ll be grasping up landings having left your balance in the car from which please God you’ll never see the launchway of tires off a brink. Later comes the sunny day when street detail whitens blindly to mauve and people hurry you, or wait, quiet.

The brain, like the earth, lies in layers. Floaters dart and punch. I see the field. My face stays numb.Keep your eye on the target. Click the button when a light appears. Last night I read “So little evidence is left of what had vanished

he came in his seedy brown jacket smelling of paint.   all thumbs, a man stumbling over his own muscles, unable to hold some part of himself and rock it, gently.   she gave up, seeing him come in the door, wanting to show him her flat belly just an hour before, looking at her own corpse in the mirror.   she lay there reduced, neither virgin nor mother. it had been decided.   the winter was too cold in the garage. they would live with her mother.   the old bedroom was already prepared, cleaned, the door opened.   the solitary twin bed remained; he would sleep on the porch. she looked at him and tried to feel her way into the body of a woman, a thing which has to be taken care of, held safely in his arms. she lay there, trying to hold on to what she had, knowing she had to let it go.

FLAVIA. THE wretched FLAVIA on her couch reclin'd, Thus breath'd the anguish of a wounded mind ; A glass revers'd in her right hand she bore, For now she shun'd the face she sought before. ' How am I chang'd ! alas ! how am I grown ' A frightful spectre, to myself unknown ! ' Where's my Complexion ? where the radiant Bloom, ' That promis'd happiness for Years to come ? ' Then with what pleasure I this face survey'd ! ' To look once more, my visits oft delay'd ! ' Charm'd with the view, a fresher red would rise, ' And a new life shot sparkling from my eyes ! ' Ah ! faithless glass, my wonted bloom restore; ' Alas ! I rave, that bloom is now no more ! ' The greatest good the GODS on men bestow, ' Ev'n youth itself, to me is useless now. ' There was a time, (oh ! that I could forget !) ' When opera-tickets pour'd before my feet ; ' And at the ring, where brightest beauties shine, ' The earliest cherries of the spring were mine. ' Witness, O Lilly ; and thou, Motteux , tell ' How much Japan these eyes have made ye sell. ' With what contempt ye you saw me oft despise ' The humble offer of the raffled prize ; ' For at the raffle still the prize I bore, ' With scorn rejected, or with triumph wore ! ' Now beauty's fled, and presents are no more ! ' For me the Patriot has the house forsook, ' And left debates to catch a passing look : ' For me the Soldier has soft verses writ ; ' For me the Beau has aim'd to be a Wit. ' For me the Wit to nonsense was betray'd ; ' The Gamester has for me his dun delay'd, ' And overseen the card, I would have play'd . ' The bold and haughty by success made vain, ' Aw'd by my eyes has trembled to complain: ' The bashful 'squire touch'd by a wish unknown, ' Has dar'd to speak with spirit not his own ; ' Fir'd by one wish, all did alike adore ; ' Now beauty's fled, and lovers are no more! ' As round the room I turn my weeping eyes, ' New unaffected scenes of sorrow rise ! ' Far from my sight that killing picture bear, ' The face disfigure, and the canvas tear ! ' That picture which with pride I us'd to show, ' The lost resemblance but upbraids me now. ' And thou, my toilette! where I oft have sat , ' While hours unheeded pass'd in deep debate, ' How curls should fall, or where a patch to place : ' If blue or scarlet best became my face; ' Now on some happier nymph thy aid bestow ; ' On fairer heads, ye useless jewels glow ! ' No borrow'd lustre can my charms restore ; ' Beauty is fled, and dress is now no more ! ' Ye meaner beauties, I permit ye shine ; ' Go, triumph in the hearts that once were mine ; ' But midst your triumphs with confusion know, ' 'Tis to my ruin all your arms ye owe. ' Would pitying Heav'n restore my wonted mien, ' Ye still might move unthought-of and unseen. ' But oh ! how vain, how wretched is the boast ' Of beauty faded, and of empire lost ! ' What now is left but weeping, to deplore ' My beauty fled, and empire now no more ! ' Ye, cruel Chymists, what with-held your aid ! ' Could no pomatums save a trembling maid ? ' How false and trifling is that art you boast ; ' No art can give me back my beauty lost. ' In tears, surrounded by my friends I lay, ' Mask'd o'er and trembled at the sight of day; ' MIRMILLO came my fortune to deplore, ' (A golden headed cane, well carv'd he bore) ' Cordials, he cried, my spirits must restore : ' Beauty is fled, and spirit is no more ! ' GALEN, the grave ; officious SQUIRT was there, ' With fruitless grief and unavailing care : ' MACHAON too, the great MACHAON, known ' By his red cloak and his superior frown ; ' And why, he cry'd, this grief and this despair ? ' You shall again be well, again be fair ; ' Believe my oath ; (with that an oath he swore) ' False was his oath ; my beauty is no more ! ' Cease, hapless maid, no more thy tale pursue, ' Forsake mankind, and bid the world adieu ! ' Monarchs and beauties rule with equal sway ; ' All strive to serve, and glory to obey : ' Alike unpitied when depos'd they grow ; ' Men mock the idol of their former vow. ' Adieu ! ye parks ! — in some obscure recess, ' Where gentle streams will weep at my distress, ' Where no false friend will in my grief take part, ' And mourn my ruin with a joyful heart ; ' There let me live in some deserted place, ' There hide in shades this lost inglorious face. ' Ye, operas, circles, I no more must view ! ' My toilette, patches, all the world adieu!

The tulips are too excitable, it is winter here. Look how white everything is, how quiet, how snowed-in. I am learning peacefulness, lying by myself quietly As the light lies on these white walls, this bed, these hands. I am nobody; I have nothing to do with explosions. I have given my name and my day-clothes up to the nurses And my history to the anesthetist and my body to surgeons. They have propped my head between the pillow and the sheet-cuff Like an eye between two white lids that will not shut. Stupid pupil, it has to take everything in. The nurses pass and pass, they are no trouble, They pass the way gulls pass inland in their white caps, Doing things with their hands, one just the same as another, So it is impossible to tell how many there are. My body is a pebble to them, they tend it as water Tends to the pebbles it must run over, smoothing them gently. They bring me numbness in their bright needles, they bring me sleep. Now I have lost myself I am sick of baggage—— My patent leather overnight case like a black pillbox, My husband and child smiling out of the family photo; Their smiles catch onto my skin, little smiling hooks. I have let things slip, a thirty-year-old cargo boat stubbornly hanging on to my name and address. They have swabbed me clear of my loving associations. Scared and bare on the green plastic-pillowed trolley I watched my teaset, my bureaus of linen, my books Sink out of sight, and the water went over my head. I am a nun now, I have never been so pure. I didn’t want any flowers, I only wanted To lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty. How free it is, you have no idea how free—— The peacefulness is so big it dazes you, And it asks nothing, a name tag, a few trinkets. It is what the dead close on, finally; I imagine them Shutting their mouths on it, like a Communion tablet. The tulips are too red in the first place, they hurt me. Even through the gift paper I could hear them breathe Lightly, through their white swaddlings, like an awful baby. Their redness talks to my wound, it corresponds. They are subtle : they seem to float, though they weigh me down, Upsetting me with their sudden tongues and their color, A dozen red lead sinkers round my neck. Nobody watched me before, now I am watched. The tulips turn to me, and the window behind me Where once a day the light slowly widens and slowly thins, And I see myself, flat, ridiculous, a cut-paper shadow Between the eye of the sun and the eyes of the tulips, And I have no face, I have wanted to efface myself. The vivid tulips eat my oxygen. Before they came the air was calm enough, Coming and going, breath by breath, without any fuss. Then the tulips filled it up like a loud noise. Now the air snags and eddies round them the way a river Snags and eddies round a sunken rust-red engine. They concentrate my attention, that was happy Playing and resting without committing itself. The walls, also, seem to be warming themselves. The tulips should be behind bars like dangerous animals; They are opening like the mouth of some great African cat, And I am aware of my heart: it opens and closes Its bowl of red blooms out of sheer love of me. The water I taste is warm and salt, like the sea, And comes from a country far away as health.

When I wake, this is what I tell myself: I belong to this, to all the ghosts present in the DNA. Diabetes, an ancient Greek consort, sweeps through the halls of my body. It seems the proper gift from my father, memory locked down in the cells of my bladder. Frequent urination is a hard nag to beat. My body is my father's complaint. He rings at two in the morning. A piss in the pot, a shot in the dark. He's never too far away.

walking to the hospital How the autumn dawn burned through the misty broods and settled down in fire; how quickly the sun glittered my shadow, how my shadow cried, a moment, with joy. A light frost, a vision of light crackling down the maples, down the tinder ash. I was the good thief. I held my Love’s sweet breath, his beautiful, intelligent gaze. I closed my eyes and he woke inside me. When I saw, he saw the inflamed world. A bird sang deeply from the gutter eaves. When I closed my eyes I was elsewhere. I walked through the fire of his sleep. leaving early My Love, tonight Fionnuala is your nurse. You’ll hear her voice sing-song around the ward lifting a wing at the shore of your darkness. I heard that, in another life, she too journeyed through a storm, a kind of curse, with the ocean rising darkly around her, fierce with cold, and no resting place, only the frozen rocks that tore her feet, the light on her shoulders. And no cure there but to wait it out. If, while I’m gone, your fever comes down— if the small, salt-laden shapes of her song appear as a first glimmer of earth-light, follow the sweet, hopeful voice of that landing. She will keep you safe beneath her wing. in your sleep After “The Lark Ascending” by Ralph Vaughan Williams The moment the lark finally vanishes into the spread green sky of the forest is the moment you suddenly lift your bruised arm up, over your body, as though to show me the wing’s eclipse, or the wing, or the season of your dream. And even as your hand lapses silent onto your chest, and your breath goes sluggish, I am already watching your feet prepare their slow first step under the sheet as the last notes of sunlight fall quiet, and you do not move again. My love, are you a bird reviving in a summer field? Was it the lark ascending that you heard, a ghost among its shy-hearted tunes? Yes. I heard the lark escaping, too.

Now footsteps on shingle. Make of it what you will. Seabirds roost on the breakwaters, accustomed, of course, to twilight. The spirit lamp in that house on the headland could easily fall and spill and the fire burn all night. Some time later a subtle ghost, yourself  in memory perhaps, might well set foot up there amid clinker and smoke, the whole place silent and still except you bring in the tic of cooling timbers, and then the birds in flight. • Now chains through gravel. Make of it what you will.

Rough music in the lane, the love child lapped in blood and safe at her breast, the pain echoed in wood on wood, steel on steel, as they come, the women in their blacks, to hound her from house and home, bands of bitches and claques of crones with their pots and pans, their hooks and ladles and bowls, to beat outside in the street, to stand at her window and howl, while the child takes a taste of green milk and “the dead of night” is all she has of her own and the music goes on and on.