a delight mas: havent we all been there?
& it's surely to be found somewhere in that great laptop in the sky...
doug
Quoting "Max Richards" <[log in to unmask]>:
> 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.
> That¹s 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? - they¹ve done away
> with, almost - except for
> Fitzgerald¹s 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 Williams¹ 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...)
>
>
Douglas Barbour
11655 - 72 Avenue NW
Edmonton Alberta T6G 0B9
That’s not a cross look it’s a sign of life
Frank O’Hara
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