Hospital Poems, Part Five: "And If I Am Lucky, Find Some Link, Some Link"

I have previously suggested that Bernard Spencer (1909-1963) is a "neglected poet."  Thus, I am pleased to report that his poems have recently come back into print (Complete Poetry, Translations and Selected Prose, edited by Peter Robinson, Bloodaxe Books).  As I noted in my earlier post on Spencer, his poetry reminds me of that of Louis MacNeice (they were, in fact, acquaintances; they both died too young in September of 1963). Perhaps the resemblance has something to do with an urbanity of tone, together with a certain irony, with a bit of reserve thrown in.  (I suppose that this description fits a number of English poets of the Thirties, Forties, and Fifties.  A. S. J. Tessimond comes to mind, for instance.)

Spencer worked for the British Council in various European (usually Mediterranean) countries.  His poetry vividly reflects all of the locations in which he lived.  At one point, he contracted tuberculosis, and, as a result, spent some time in a hospital in Switzerland in 1948.  The following poem is about that hospital stay.

               William Ratcliffe (1870-1955), "The Conservatory Window"

               In a Foreign Hospital

Valleys away in the August dark the thunder
roots and tramples: lightning sharply prints
for an instant trees, hills, chimneys on the night.
We lie here in our similar rooms with the white
furniture, with our bit of Death inside us
(nearer than that Death our whole life lies under);
the man in the next room with the low voice,
the brown-skinned boy, the child among its toys
and I and others.  Against my bedside light
a small green insect flings itself with a noise
tiny and regular, a 'tink; tink, tink'.

A Nun stands rustling by, saying good night,
hooded and starched and smiling with her kind
lifeless, religious eyes.  'Is there anything
you want?' -- 'Sister, why yes, so many things:'
England is somewhere far away to my right
and all Your letter promised; days behind
my left hand or my head (or a whole age)
are dearer names and easier beds than here.
But since tonight must lack for all of these
I am free to keep my watch with images,
a bare white room, the World, an insect's rage,
and if I am lucky, find some link, some link.

Bernard Spencer, With Luck Lasting (1963).

The phrase "all Your letter promised" in line 17 may refer to his first wife Nora, who died of tuberculosis-related heart failure in June of 1947.  His lovely poem "At Courmayeur" (which I have previously posted) is based upon their planned holiday in the Alps that was foreclosed by her death.

                      William Ratcliffe, "Regent's Canal at Hammersmith"

Hospital Poems, Part 4: "And The Saved Man Goes Home"

Here is a hospital poem by James Reeves, one of my neglected poets.  Whether this poem is light or dark or deep or shallow I have never been able to decide.  (Which no doubt means that I am very slow on the uptake.)

                    Discharged From Hospital

He stands upon the steps and fronts the morning.
The porter has called a taxi, and behind him
The infirmary doors have swung and come to rest.
Physician, surgeon, and anaesthetist
Have exercised their skill and he is cured.
The rabelaisian sister with the bedpan,
The vigorous masseuse, the sensual nurse
Who washes him modestly beneath a blanket,
The dawn chorus of cleaners, the almoner,
The visiting clergyman -- all proceed without him.
He is alone beyond all need of them,
And the saved man goes home, to die of health.

James Reeves, The Questioning Tiger (1964).

                 Charles Mahoney (1903-1968), "Still Life With Celery"

Hospital Poems, Part Three: "Waiting"

W. E. Henley (1849-1903) wrote a sequence of 28 poems titled "In Hospital."  The poems are based upon his 20-month stay in The Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh from 1873 to 1875, where he was treated for tuberculosis by Dr. Joseph Lister (namesake of, yes, Listerine).  He had suffered from the disease from the age of twelve.  This all sounds very bleak, I know.  But Henley brings (trust me!) some humor to the whole business.  Although there is, of necessity, some bleakness.

                                Waiting

A square, squat room (a cellar on promotion),
   Drab to the soul, drab to the very daylight;
   Plasters astray in unnatural-looking tin-ware;
   Scissors and lint and apothecary's jars.

Here, on a bench a skeleton would writhe from,
   Angry and sore, I wait to be admitted:
   Wait till my heart is lead upon my stomach,
   While at their ease two dressers do their chores.

One has a probe -- it feels to me a crowbar.
   A small boy sniffs and shudders after bluestone.
   A poor old tramp explains his poor old ulcers.
   Life is (I think) a blunder and a shame.

W. E. Henley, A Book of Verses (1888).

Henley closed the sequence with "Discharged."  This is the final stanza of the poem:

Free . . . !
Dizzy, hysterical, faint,
I sit, and the carriage rolls on with me
Into the wonderful world.

           Kenneth Rowntree, "View Through an Open Window" (1944)

Hospital Poems, Part Two: "Nothing Whatever Is By Love Debarred"

Quite some time ago, I started a Hospital Poems series, but only got as far as John Betjeman's "The Cottage Hospital."  I have been led (cheerfully) down other paths since that time.  As I noted in Part One of the series, I am not aware of (nor have I looked for) an anthology of poems about hospitals.  This is merely a personal selection of poems that I have stumbled upon over the years.  Today's poem is by Patrick Kavanagh.  

                              The Hospital

A year ago I fell in love with the functional ward
Of a chest hospital:  square cubicles in a row
Plain concrete, wash basins -- an art lover's woe,
Not counting how the fellow in the next bed snored.
But nothing whatever is by love debarred,
The common and banal her heat can know.
The corridor led to a stairway and below
Was the inexhaustible adventure of a gravelled yard.

This is what love does to things:  the Rialto Bridge,
The main gate that was bent by a heavy lorry,
The seat at the back of a shed that was a suntrap.
Naming these things is the love-act and its pledge;
For we must record love's mystery without claptrap,
Snatch out of time the passionate transitory.

Patrick Kavanagh, Come Dance with Kitty Stobling and Other Poems (1960).

A note on the reference to "the Rialto Bridge":  in 1955, Kavanagh had a cancerous lung removed at the Rialto Hospital in Dublin.  He later gave his surgeon a signed copy of one of his books, inscribing it:  "a token of remembrance of a curious happiness I knew when in the Rialto Hospital a year ago."

                                                Francesco Guardi
                          "Grand Canal with the Rialto Bridge" (c. 1780)

Hospital Poems, Part One: John Betjeman

Given the large number of poetry anthologies out there, I would not be surprised if someone has compiled a collection of poems about hospitals.  If so, I have not seen it.  (Nor have I looked for it.)  Thus, I apologize if some enterprising anthologist has trod this ground before me.  That being said, I have not made a conscious effort to search out hospital poems.  Rather, I have simply come across them in my aimless reading.

Is there a common theme to what I have stumbled upon?  Well, as you might expect, death haunts these hospital corridors.  But, as Hartley Coleridge (1796-1849) wrote:  "Think upon Death, 'tis good to think of Death."  Now that I have no doubt chased everyone away, here is a poem by John Betjeman:

          The Cottage Hospital

At the end of a long-walled garden
   in a red provincial town,
A  brick path led to a mulberry --
   scanty grass at its feet.
I lay under blackening branches
   where the mulberry leaves hung down
Sheltering ruby fruit globes
   from a Sunday-tea-time heat.
Apple and plum espaliers
   basked upon bricks of brown;
The air was swimming with insects,
   and children played in the street.

Out of this bright intentness
   into the mulberry shade
Musca domestica (housefly)
   swung from the August light
Slap into slithery rigging
   by the waiting spider made
Which spun the lithe elastic
   till the fly was shrouded tight.
Down came the hairy talons
   and horrible poison blade
And none of the garden noticed
   that fizzing, hopeless fight.

Say in what Cottage Hospital
   whose pale green walls resound
With the tap upon polished parquet
   of inflexible nurses' feet
Shall I myself be lying
   when they range the screens around?
And say shall I groan in dying,
   as I twist the sweaty sheet?
Or gasp for breath uncrying,
   as I feel my senses drowned
While the air is swimming with insects
   and children play in the street?

                                Ventnor Cottage Hospital, Isle of Wight