I’m posting this from Lynton in Devon where Penny and I have been walking and writing. We are renting a cottage with a wonderful view over the Bristol Channel to South Wales. This rather strange poem popped into my head, so I thought I’d share it with you.
At the Treatment Centre
I looked round at the men waiting with me.
All were wearing hospital gowns,
the ones with backs that bare your arse.
There was a man with the face of the moon.
Another had mean features and pointy eyes.
A third was small, nervy, at odds with himself.
A fourth man arrived with a shiny head,
muscular with angry tattoos. He grunted
a greeting. We flinched as he sat down.
When my turn came I was put on a trolley
and wheeled into the anaesthetic bay where
I was asked to start counting to ten.
I reached six or seven before finding myself
in a small cafe with three men drinking tea,
muttering among themselves.
One had a moon face and spectacles.
Another a thin face and bullets for eyes.
The other was mouselike and mean looking.
Suddenly a giant of a man barged through
the door. He had no hair and was covered
in tattoos. The three at the table trembled.
The giant began bawling in a foreign tongue,
I looked into his face, his eyes, and realised
they were my father’s eyes, then…
You can wake up now sir. Would you like tea?
A disturbing poem with a disturbing circularity. How would it be, d’you think, if instead of the final line you returned again to one of the earlier lines to give it an even more nightmarish quality… say, ‘I looked round at’ and left it at that?