The bad burn waits with his head unbandaged. My neighbour chokes in the clutch of chloral … O, a gruesome world!

 

IV—BEFORE

 

Behold me waiting—waiting for the knife. A little while, and at a leap I storm The thick, sweet mystery of chloroform, The drunken dark, the little death-in-life. The gods are good to me: I have no wife, No innocent child, to think of as I near The fateful minute; nothing all-too dear Unmans me for my bout of passive strife. Yet am I tremulous and a trifle sick, And, face to face with chance, I shrink a little: My hopes are strong, my will is something weak. Here comes the basket? Thank you. I am ready. But, gentlemen my porters, life is brittle: You carry Caesar and his fortunes—steady!

 

V—OPERATION

 

You are carried in a basket, Like a carcase from the shambles, To the theatre, a cockpit Where they stretch you on a table.

Then they bid you close your eyelids, And they mask you with a napkin, And the anaesthetic reaches Hot and subtle through your being.

And you gasp and reel and shudder In a rushing, swaying rapture, While the voices at your elbow Fade—receding—fainter—farther.

Lights about you shower and tumble, And your blood seems crystallising - Edged and vibrant, yet within you Racked and hurried back and forward.

Then the lights grow fast and furious, And you hear a noise of waters, And you wrestle, blind and dizzy, In an agony of effort,

Till a sudden lull accepts you, And you sound an utter darkness … And awaken … with a struggle … On a hushed, attentive audience.

 

VI—AFTER

 

Like as a flamelet blanketed in smoke, So through the anaesthetic shows my life; So flashes and so fades my thought, at strife With the strong stupor that I heave and choke And sicken at, it is so foully sweet. Faces look strange from space—and disappear. Far voices, sudden loud, offend my ear - And hush as sudden. Then my senses fleet: All were a blank, save for this dull, new pain That grinds my leg and foot; and brokenly Time and the place glimpse on to me again; And, unsurprised, out of uncertainty, I wake—relapsing—somewhat faint and fain, To an immense, complacent dreamery.

 

VII—VIGIL

 

Lived on one’s back, In the long hours of repose, Life is a practical nightmare - Hideous asleep or awake.

Shoulders and loins Ache– -! Ache, and the mattress, Run into boulders and hummocks, Glows like a kiln, while the bedclothes - Tumbling, importunate, daft - Ramble and roll, and the gas, Screwed to its lowermost, An inevitable atom of light, Haunts, and a stertorous sleeper Snores me to hate and despair.

All the old time Surges malignant before me; Old voices, old kisses, old songs Blossom derisive about me; While the new days Pass me in endless procession: A pageant of shadows Silently, leeringly wending On … and still on … still on!

Far in the stillness a cat Languishes loudly. A cinder Falls, and the shadows Lurch to the leap of the flame. The next man to me Turns with a moan; and the snorer, The drug like a rope at his throat, Gasps, gurgles, snorts himself free, as the night-nurse, Noiseless and strange, Her bull’s eye half-lanterned in apron, (Whispering me, ‘Are ye no sleepin’ yet?’), Passes, list-slippered and peering, Round … and is gone.

Sleep comes at last - Sleep full of dreams and misgivings - Broken with brutal and sordid Voices and sounds that impose on me, Ere I can wake to it, The unnatural, intolerable day.

 

VIII—STAFF-NURSE: OLD STYLE

 

The greater masters of the commonplace, REMBRANDT and good SIR WALTER—only these Could paint her all to you: experienced ease And antique liveliness and ponderous grace; The sweet old roses of her sunken face; The depth and malice of her sly, grey eyes; The broad Scots tongue that flatters, scolds, defies; The thick Scots wit that fells you like a mace. These thirty years has she been nursing here, Some of them under SYME , her hero still. Much is she worth, and even more is made of her. Patients and students hold her very dear. The doctors love her, tease her, use her skill. They say ‘The Chief’ himself is half-afraid of her.

 

IX—LADY-PROBATIONER

 

Some three, or five, or seven, and thirty years; A Roman nose; a dimpling double-chin; Dark eyes and shy that, ignorant of sin, Are yet acquainted, it would seem, with tears; A comely shape; a slim, high-coloured hand, Graced, rather oddly, with a signet ring; A bashful air, becoming everything; A well-bred silence always at command. Her plain print gown, prim cap, and bright steel chain Look out of place on her, and I remain Absorbed in her, as in a pleasant mystery. Quick, skilful, quiet, soft in speech and touch … ‘Do you like nursing?’ ‘Yes, Sir, very much.’ Somehow, I rather think she has a history.

 

X—STAFF-NURSE: NEW STYLE

 

Blue-eyed and bright of face but waning fast Into the sere of virginal decay, I view her as she enters, day by day, As a sweet sunset almost overpast. Kindly and calm, patrician to the last, Superbly falls her gown of sober gray, And on her chignon’s elegant array The plainest cap is somehow touched with caste. She talks BEETHOVEN; frowns disapprobation At BALZAC’S name, sighs it at ‘poor GEORGE SAND’S’; Knows that she has exceeding pretty hands; Speaks Latin with a right accentuation; And gives at need (as one who understands) Draught, counsel, diagnosis, exhortation.

 

XI—CLINICAL

 

Hist? … Through the corridor’s echoes, Louder and nearer Comes a great shuffling of feet. Quick, every one of you, Strighten your quilts, and be decent! Here’s the Professor.

In he comes first With the bright look we know, From the broad, white brows the kind eyes Soothing yet nerving you. Here at his elbow, White-capped, white-aproned, the Nurse, Towel on arm and her inkstand Fretful with quills. Here in the ruck, anyhow, Surging along, Louts, duffers, exquisites, students, and prigs - Whiskers and foreheads, scarf-pins and spectacles - Hustles the Class! And they ring themselves Round the first bed, where the Chief (His dressers and clerks at attention), Bends in inspection already.

So shows the ring Seen from behind round a conjurer Doing his pitch in the street. High shoulders, low shoulders, broad shoulders, narrow ones, Round, square, and angular, serry and shove; While from within a voice, Gravely and weightily fluent, Sounds; and then ceases; and suddenly (Look at the stress of the shoulders!) Out of a quiver of silence, Over the hiss of the spray, Comes a low cry, and the sound Of breath quick intaken through teeth Clenched in resolve. And the Master Breaks from the crowd, and goes, Wiping his hands, To the next bed, with his pupils Flocking and whispering behind him.

Now one can see. Case Number One Sits (rather pale) with his bedclothes Stripped up, and showing his foot (Alas for God’s Image!) Swaddled in wet, white lint Brilliantly hideous with red.

 

XII—ETCHING

 

Two and thirty is the ploughman. He’s a man of gallant inches, And his hair is close and curly, And his beard; But his face is wan and sunken, And his eyes are large and brilliant, And his shoulder-blades are sharp, And his knees.

He is weak of wits, religious, Full of sentiment and yearning, Gentle, faded—with a cough And a snore. When his wife (who was a widow, And is many years his elder) Fails to write, and that is always, He desponds.

Let his melancholy wander, And he’ll tell you pretty stories Of the women that have wooed him Long ago; Or he’ll sing of bonnie lasses Keeping sheep among the heather, With a crackling, hackling click In his voice.

 

XIII—CASUALTY

 

As with varnish red and glistening Dripped his hair; his feet looked rigid; Raised, he settled stiffly sideways: You could see his hurts were spinal.

He had fallen from an engine, And been dragged along the metals.