Creative Delirium
(To Marilyn)
The bookshop café is gone
(I've just been back to check)
where we once sat down
with books, drinks and snack,
and my head began
to swim, strange pain
from toe to neck set in.
It will pass, I thought.
You thought not -
soon we checked in
at Emergency, Epworth.
On the trolley, supine,
my tests began
while I blanked out
or raved deliriously.
They treated me
for septicaemia.
Thatıs what killed
Rupert Brooke en route
to Gallipoli, I recalled.
He died not of a Turkish bullet
but a bad mosquito bite.
Antibiotics might have saved
him as they now did me,
even while I raved.
Inspired intensely,
I called for - not paper
and pen but a laptop.
It came, I tapped
into it a brilliant poem
embodying the insights
of my delirium.
I found afterwards
no trace of my verses.
Later you told me I'd been
very rude to the nurses.
My poem! it had the fluency
and range of Byron,
the deep discovery
of Coleridge, Eliot on
a happy drug, Ginsberg
with unginsbergian economy,
Shakespearean dialogue
eminently stage-worthy.
*
I browsed the books quietly -
where once was café
now cookbooks piled high,
of scant interest to me.
Poetry? - theyıve done away
with, almost - except for
Fitzgeraldıs Omar,
Kahlil Gibran and Rumi.
I envy them they never
used laptops, nor ever
raved in hospital
risking ridicule.
Nor, I trust, did Brooke.
But I found and bought
from the remainder table
Vaughan Williamsı folksong book.
I give you it, my rescuer and wife,
in memory of your saving my life,
my fal-de-ral little lady,
my right fol-lol-liddle-lol-le-day.
Max Richards
(that episode was years ago; latest -
in next week's snap...)
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