Vernon Scannell
The Year of the Crab
Night Shift
Well past midnight now: outside,
beyond these still curtains, heavy with implications,
their secretive corrugations,
the wind whimpers and whispers to be let in.
A single circular lamp, stunned moon,
flat on the ceiling, dilutes the dark
but cannot cancel it. The quietness
is never absolute; sleep crumples it.
The sighs and snarls of human breathing
seem no more meaningful than the wind’s noise
or the faraway whispering of a nurse:
her voice is a tuneless lullaby.
At spaced intervals the figures move,
sexless in their long vague robes,
slow and soundless down the ward,
anonymous and self-absorbed.
The pale procession will last as long
as darkness lasts. They have lost
their ordinariness with their identities.
They are practising at being ghosts.
Page(s) 51-52
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