Christmas Break

We’ve floored it from London.
The bridge winches up; the moat bares
To green algae silk, kitchen relics,
The bones of suicides.

The snow, fine as bride’s
Fine lace, stacks up its trousseau:
A terrain in bedsheets, smoothed from memory.
The town’s dead as midnight.

Rushing the houses of the estate,
The wind skims the roof
Like a bruising hand.
From now, a dining-table

Accommodates six at Scrabble
And a week’s career beneath
The fairy lights: a family circuit
Closing like a wreath.

Round

Out till 4 o’clock dancing, they’re
Back on the ward at half-seven from Sligo,
Vigorously turning the sheets.
I can’t get up no

A double amputee fell
Off a wheelchair and began to spin
Until we could raise him.
I can’t get up

A cancer case, deep yellow, spoke of
The discos at Bart’s where he’d been a porter.
We slow slow-danced, I braced him for x-ray.
no I can’t get up

The sun floods the sluice room.
The young tree outside is a christening white.
He’s drawn up his swollen legs and stopped breathing.
no I can’t get up

Neither Luke nor John nor the patron
Of wanderers nor Mary herself help the sister
To dial. Women shriek down the phone.
no

Send Letters To:

The Editor
London Review of Books,
28 Little Russell Street
London, WC1A 2HN

letters@lrb.co.uk

Please include name, address, and a telephone number.

Read anywhere with the London Review of Books app, available now from the App Store for Apple devices, Google Play for Android devices and Amazon for your Kindle Fire.

Sign up to our newsletter

For highlights from the latest issue, our archive and the blog, as well as news, events and exclusive promotions.

Newsletter Preferences