Stanley Cook
NHS
1
Cars gather round old hospital buildings
Like a litter at a sow.
Must say first the last time I was here,
With a cut to my eye, they couldn’t have done
A better repair. (I waited hours of course.)
From the consultant with his court of students
Down to the cleaner ruling the ward with a mop
Your time (a bleak room full of you,
All with appointments at ten) is theirs;
While you fret with grandma or her grandchild
The waiting brings you down on your knees
As flatly as the stacking chairs.
Visiting time: boxes, plastic bags
And equipment labelled ‘Not working’ first in the queue
Strange how patients reading the loves of the angels
In Mills and Boon complain of their neglect.
The boiler house chimney makes smoke
Giving the world outside the signal it wants,
That all, in a way, is well.
2
Nursing homes are neat and strong on tulips,
Daffodils and roses, though mostly lawn;
Their cherry trees in Spring are sugared with blossom,
Their limes are laden in Summer with sulphur,
Their jumbo refuse bins are round a corner.
They are in our mood, arriving with flowers
Or anything not entirely irrelevant
To someone’s illness, knowing all we can do
Is tidy their plight.
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The