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

You’ll probably get seen to – sooner or later…
The ratchet that props this pillow at my back won’t catch quite right.

The cleaner’s just been through – dettoling the floor, pushing my bed
                                                                                      around:
like practised passes down aisles with a dicky supermarket trolley.
                                                                             Even cleaning
must have its protocol here; it looks more like a silent variation of
                                                                            Musical Chairs.

Then a nurse on circuit from Intensive Care stoops randomly, miming
                                                                            close attention,
before she shushes curtains around some peculiarly demanding
                                                                            terminal case.

Enter now that heart specialist; he likes to pretend all the beds here
                                                                         in Men’s Surgical
remain an entirely open book to him: duodecimo – with neat
                                                                         tuck-ins.
Any condition that seems a little bit unfamiliar just gets the quick
                                                                         once – over.

You can see in this hospital, such is the medical team’s expertise
                                                                         – in suggesting
that ‘they know best’ and that ‘everything’s in hand’ – long-term
                                                                         patients can lose
all sense of individuality – and of what their essential illness really is.

(From the bed next to mine a finger dithers over the red emergency
                                                                        button – uncertain
about whether it’s better to draw attention – or better risking not to.)

Though most have learnt enough to fake what avoiding action still
                                                                        remains available
when a certain consultant returns to our bedsides – usually disguised
                                                                       as a tea- lady
who has a pressing hard luck story. How endlessly she nags on
                                                                   about her own ailments,

and, in particular, her poor circulation.
                                                      Best, after all, to wait for
                                                                   the more considered
pull of the disinterested mortuary attendant on the rows of stiffs in
                                                                   filing cabinets.