Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

If, when he attacked his neighbour,
he had been tried for assault,
had paid his fine, done his time;
if his brother had told someone, then,
that the old woman next door
did persecute him, did
bang on the dividing wall, did lie
in wait and berate him, did pull faces,
make vile gestures at him every single time
she saw him passing her window; if his brother
had said that he too had seen this
instead of saying that his brother had always
taken things too much to heart;
then he wouldn’t have been diagnosed initially
as suffering paranoid delusions
and placed on a Section. If
we had believed him when he quietly told us
how much the hospital beds were hurting his back
and if the doctors hadn’t thought his anger
at being disbelieved a part of his delusion;
if we had paid more attention to his complaints
about the effects the neuroleptics were having on him;
then he wouldn’t have tried to squeeze himself
through the first floor window. And, if,
before he came back from the secure unit,
they had told us that two days previously
he had tried to strangle a woman he thought
was about to attack me; and if his brother
had said that he had phoned him
every week since his admission
threatening suicide; and if we had understood
what he meant when he said that the fortnightly depots
were leaving him no future, that they wouldn’t
let him have two thoughts together;
then maybe he wouldn’t have been allowed
to proceed on weekend leave, to the same flat
beside the horrible old woman; and maybe
he wouldn’t, within three hours of getting indoors,
have hanged himself. Maybe.