Vernon Scannell
The Year of the Crab
Loving the Nurses
Slowly, the long pale bandage of each day
unwinds and darkens as the night descends;
hygienic and efficient hands bring opiates
and pain slinks off to its hot lair.
He feels for every nurse a blend
of gratitude and admiration that, together, ape
the lineaments of love; he has read somewhere
all patients fall in love with those who wear
the uniform of trained compassion; now he learns
that this is almost true, though ‘almost’ rules
with that authority which overturns
the absolute of ‘true’ as his true love
comes in from loveless night and brings those spoils
which neither he nor his affliction earns.
Page(s) 51
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