|
HOSPITALS
Peroxide
was a domestic
treatment
for troublesome eardrums.
For
all I know, that mild acid
was
wives’ physic passed to my mum
by
Little Gran or Aunt Alice.
I
must have howled before they got
something
logical done, like have
the
infirmary operate.
There
the worst was the gas, a stuff
pumped
via muzzle after they’d strapped
me
to a padded work table.
The
terror of the bondage soon
became
a fight to breathe, a swell
outward
of my head’s hot balloon
as
Bosch nightmares dragged me to hell.
Later
they picked out the stitches
while
I was awake and saw in
the
crescent cup on the pillows
my
mastoid blood, strawberry thin:
my
votive for having nine lives
though
with one deaf ear. Hospitals
became
less scary, more routine,
though
the gas and the facial tools
(the
dentist’s next) warned that the join
between
well and worse never heals.
Diphtheria
was just a spell
in
a bed not my own: it was
like
the wards were my Grand Hotel.
Visits
weren’t simple, once because
I
was subtly urged to get well
when
brother Bill in my school cap
caused
me to rave as they left, or
so
I was told later by Dad.
The
next bout was scarlet fever,
picked
up in the war’s countryside.
At
Alton in Hants I spent weeks
in
a loose ward of war children,
mixed
sexes. We all wore bed
smocks;
giggled
more out of bed than in,
jumping
on the springs, giving peeks.
The
hussy in the end bed showed
most:
quick flashes seen quite often
gave
a vision of the divide
at
the base of the feminine.
Mercifully,
lust got delayed.
I
was lucky to be alive.
There
was always that safety net
for
the poor. I survived to
live
amidst
care we took for granted—
in
a flesh which could misbehave.
Alan
Marshfield
top
of page
note |
