If you’ve never quite understood Waiting for Godot it’s possible that a stay in hospital will provide a key. Overheard conversations, especially the ones between doctors that they don’t expect you to listen to, are quietly unnerving. Particularly on a ward at night. Which is one reason I like today’s poem so much. Another reason is that it’s a homage to Louis McNiece. Always good, but rarer than it should be.
Eclogue on ward 46 : Ian Harker
Leeds General Infirmary.
Two junior doctors.
HARRY
Ladyboys are back
JAY
That’s how you tell the time
of year here
HARRY
Tennis then the Ladyboys
then German Market.
It’s like Millennium Square is a heart
and you could reach in
and hold Leeds’s heart in your hands
a pump in a tin box
JAY
Scruffy frightened bird
sand coming out the ends
of an hourglass
HARRY
Think that’s what it’s like?
I saw one last year
JAY
Funny we should be on about hearts
HARRY
I saw one. It was underneath
the ribs, banging away
JAY
Like a washing machine
you think it’s going to kick free
HARRY
Angry little bald bloke
red like it’s holding its breath
JAY
or a face at the bars
HARRY
I said it looks heavy
like a snooker ball
it looks like it should be smooth –
on baize with its own balance
JAY
I held a brain from a jar
You can smell it I said
formaldehyde the technician said
no I said
it’s someone’s life
this guy’s life getting heavier
in my hands. I could smell
all the rooms his life added up to
like morphine
a clean white smell
HARRY
Morphine’s death –
you can’t feel death,
it’s cold at the edges.
Anything that’ll kill you
in cold in the end.
I think dying must be like
being sunblind,
like walking into a room
and you can’t see
JAY
This woman on Ward 4
said her mother had been to visit her
I looked at her notes and she was 84
she died in the night
half past three it’s always
half past three
HARRY
Wonder where she was from.
From Jubilee
you can see the sunset over Beeston,
redbrick sunset.
I can almost feel people’s lives
sieving through my fingers
JAY
More people are born here
than die
HARRY
That’s what I mean
JAY
How d’you mean?
JAY
Something about weight –
brain weight
heart weight
some fucking meme on Facebook
about the soul having a weight,
the body weighs slightly less dead
than it does alive
HARRY
I need to get out of these scrubs
JAY
School uniform
Remember how it smelt
after a whole day?
Half past four
before your parents got back
HARRY
Everything used to be summer
hot like the back of a car
even Christmas used to feel hot
like a pint glass that’s just been washed,
as warm and new as that
JAY
Remember old TVs?
That was weight too
eyebulge in the corner
and it took two of you
HARRY
You could see yourself in it
when you switched it off
full length in this afterglow
JAY
After school
HARRY
Not really
half term in the holidays
midnight and not having to get up
till midday sneaking downstairs
JAY
I used to think the Earth would glow static
if you switched out the stars
like maybe you could hold it
HARRY
weight
JAY
Hold it in your hand
and there’d be the sea rolling around
in your palm, if you lifted it
to your ear
HARRY
I’ve got to get back
JAY
Remember more people
are born here than die
HARRY
Massive Fuck You –
Congratulations, Mum –
it’s a Fuck You
JAY
You know – I know you’re late –
but you know we’ve colonised 80%
of the planet’s land mass
and killed 80% of the mammals
HARRY
’cept chickens.
This weird bird that can’t fly
it’s almost extinct and we spread it
across the world, it’s everywhere,
most successful animal there is
more of them than there are of us
JAY
You’ll be late
HARRY
See you around
JAY
See you
HARRY
Under all the weight
or not under it – around it
JAY
You’re knackered mate
HARRY
Tell Death Fuck You from me
if you see him
JAY
See you
HARRY
see you around
Ian Harker
2005 Communication and Cultural Studies and Media alumnus of Leeds Trinity University, Ian Harker secured a two-book deal with respected poetry publisher, Templar Poetry in 2015. Ian was chosen as one of three winners of Templar Poetry’s Pamphlet Competition and his debut collection was The End of the Sky. (Templar Poetry Dec 2015) ..His work has been published in a number of magazines and he has been shortlisted for two major competitions – the Bridport Prize and the Troubadour prize.
Since graduating, Ian has worked at Blackwells Bookshop, in Leeds.
With Andrew Lambert, in 2017 Ian has created Strix – a new magazine of poetry and short fiction. Issue One appeared this summer, and submissions for Issue2 were invited up to September 30th. If you didn’t know, you’ve missed it. Look out for the submission window for Issue3
His second collection Rules of Survival launches this September. Today in fact. You could be in time to be there. Chemic Tavern. Leeds This afternoon
