Agreed. Especially the euphemism "or further."
The poem seems to seeking closure and not finding it.
I'm not sure that just lopping off the last line
would do it. Maybe just changing "or further" to
"or died," if the repetition isn't too
troublesome. If one of the dieds needs to go,
perhaps the first--"how recently we'd lost..." maybe.
At 06:12 PM 3/2/2010, you wrote:
>Hi Max,
>
>thank you for this.
>
>I love the unnecessary words, bouncing around like a dog.
>
>It really is pretty wonderful.
>
>I'm a bit worried about the last line. Wd the poem be more itself without it?
>
>best
>
>Randolph
>
>Max Richards wrote:
>> At the Oncology Ward
>>Royal Women's Hospital, Melbourne
>>
>>on his weekend visit as therapy dog,
>>our Labrador greets equally all nurses and patients, the brisk, the sad,
>>the bare-bald-headed, even. Men
>>he's liable to woof at questioningly. I don't
>>see this, I'm outside waiting to chauffeur him
>>home with his proud mistress. 'Did he behave
>>well this time?' He did. He didn't shy away from anyone.
>>
>>He didn't steal biscuits, this time.
>>He specially liked the woman and baby
>>breast-feeding. (It's whispered that giving
>>birth may advance a woman's cancer.) 'And - he posed for snaps. I found myself
>>mentioning how recently our old dog died.
>>"What of?" - couldn't utter the word "cancer" - "old age".'
>>
>>Next visit same staff, most likely.
>>Patients a new set, some will have gone home,
>>others maybe to a hospice, or further.
>> Max Richards
>>
>> Wednesday 3 March 2010
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>
>Announcing The Whole Island: Six Decades of
>Cuban Poetry (University of California Press).
>http://go.ucpress.edu/WholeIsland
>
>"Not since the 1982 publication of Paul Auster's
>Random House Book of Twentieth Century French
>Poetry has a bilingual anthology so effectively
>broadened the sense of poetic terrain outside
>the United States and also created a superb
>collection of foreign poems in English. There is
>nothing else like it." John Palattella in The
>Nation
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