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Vernon Scannell

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The Year of the Crab

The Machine Room

This scene, to a neutrally cool gaze, might seem
like footage from an early film, Fritz Lang perhaps,
an unmade movie mixing modes -
a quasi-scientific vision of a world
in black and white, mysterious machines,
attendant figures, sacerdotal, gowned,
and a horror film in which the home-made man
is yet to rise from where he lies, strapped down,
to set about his mad creators and rove wild.
But, to the patient in his vitreous world,
stretched on his trestle-bed, the room
is sounds of movement, mechanical and alive,
steely sighs and groans, a steady hum,
then conference of voices, low, intent,
discussing problems in their unknown tongue
while he, like his own grandchild, listens to
the serious grown-up sounds that make no sense.

Darkness and light perform their dance.
He counts masked seconds as they shuffle past
and waits for his release.
He prays that he will neither sneeze nor cough.

Then, with unexpected and explosive crash,
the plastic shell containing neck and head
is - as always, shockingly - unclamped,
and he is helped by practised hands
down from the narrow couch to stand
restored to a brief and dizzy perpendicular
before being lowered to his patient chair
and wheeled away towards the ward
to lie and wait until the following day’s
confinement in the glassy cranial cell.

 

Page(s) 49-50

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