These are the Hands - by
for the 60th anniversary of the NHS
/
/ These are the hands
/ That touch us first
/ Feel your head
/ Find the pulse
/ And make your bed.
/
/ These…
The Hand that Sees
To The Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh (1505-2005) - by
A Welcome
/
/ Sons and daughters of Aesculapius
/ from Doctor & Prof to Mr & Ms,
/ we the citizenry of Auld Reekie
/ celebrate your Quincentenary;
/ James…
The Curator - by
Step this way, sir. Just here you may see
/ a child’s head so full of water
/ that the world’s alarms were quite…
Dissection of an Infant – Vascular Preparation - by
I would have loved you, wept
/ with your father and your mother
/ over these tiny perfect hands, perfect feet
/
/ preserved skin-free, en-pointe –
/ as…
The Rafa-Gaza Road 1918 - by
I am looking, as you are, through Henry Wade
/ his eyes, his lens: the Rafa-Gaza road
/ aching towards a sky perhaps grey,…
A Continuity Problem - by
A Continuity Problem
/
/ 1.
/ Machines for fixing
/ machines for fixing machines
/ for fixing machines.
/
/ 2.
/ For a waiting-room,
/ it’s perfect. We don’t even
/ realise we’re there.
/
/ 3.
/ ‘I’d rather…
My Mother’s Body Interrogated By Light - by
This is what happened
/ Someone lifted a grey translucency to the light
/ and held it there
/ seeing the knit fracture in the clavicle
/ the…
Corneal Graft - by
For all the eye specialists I’ve seen – in varying degrees of haziness – over the years,
/ and for the…
To the Eye Surgeon - by
‘my eyes have seen what my hand did’
/ — Robert Lowell
/
/ No matter what we say, we still believe
/ the soul is here,…
Microbes - by
smaller than the eye can see the living dead
/ floating in limbo awaiting a host
/
/ we don’t discriminate we’ll invade anyone
/ occupy your secret places incubate and…
The Man With Three Legs - by
From the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery,
/ University of St Andrews
/ In the autumn of 1948 a message was received from a…
Skin is Time and Lets Itself be Flayed - by
He saw, or thought he saw,
/ his skin become time’s curvature …
/ Having peeled it off, he holds it
/ up for further inspection
/ in…