Dannie Abse

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Pathology of Colours

I know the colour rose, and it is lovely,
but not when it ripens in a tumour;
and healing greens, leaves and grass, so springlike,
in limbs that fester are not springlike.

I have seen red-blue tinged with hirsute mauve
in the plum-skin face of a suicide.
I have seen white, china white almost, stare
from behaind the smashed windscreen of a car.

And the criminal, multi-coloured flash
of an H-bomb is no more beautiful
than an autopsy when the belly's opened -
to show cathedral windows never opened.

So in the simple blessing of a rainbow,
in the bevelled edge of a sunlit mirror,
I have seen, visible, Death's artifact
like a soldier's ribbon on a tunic tacked.

From: Ask the Moon: New and Collected Poems 1948 – 2014
Publisher: Hutchinson,

Read by the poet at Poetry International Festival Rotterdam, 1983

Dannie Abse

(United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, 1923 - 2014)

Dannie Abse was an esteemed poet, author, playwright and former doctor. He was a hugely popular figure in British poetry, a former President of the Poetry Society (1978-1992) and a powerful reader who displayed great humour and lightness of touch. He remained a vigorous poet up until his death in 2014, with new poems published in recent issues of The Poetry Review.