THE INTERLUDE

THE INTERLUDE

THE INTERLUDE

What got you there – laid out in a cot, in a diaper –
was the scrum of punched nurses and policemen
who tried to restrain you as long as you flailed.
What were left, in the loose flesh of your arms, were

the bruises, as blue-purple as plums, like the footmarks
of the struggle that broke, flapped open and snatched
your mind. What I thought I’d heard was something
opening very abruptly and shaking itself out

in a rustle of ancient bodices and ballgowns
and corset bones which creaked. Whatever had flapped out of you
seemed to have taken with it the last of sense.
Whatever had flapped out of you, and gone its way,

had dumped you hugely on one side, one arm
laid limply over the other, oblivious to your visitors.
Whosoever lingered at the cot-bars – like the faces
in a Doré nightmare, uncertain of who stared at whom

and who stared back – you looked straight through
to middle distance, chewed on the cud of space.
Your son swayed away – this was too much for him.
By then all you could do was address your self;

as if to say you could not be reached, brother,
and we felt like we were shouting and shouting
through layers of thick glass. We hoped to draw your mind –
by that I mean the wholly disembodied self

which might have hovered over you –
back towards the light . . . but had to leave, instead,
to the sound of your voice spinning in the dark
at the slightest touch, at the slightest touch.