- Email: [email protected]
For Mr Burton
THE LANCET
Department of poetry
For Mr Burton I still feel bound to you Even though we weren’t alone That long gasping night Creaks and sighs of other bodies Sifting through the curtains But you grasped my hand Then grasped the dark air As if clawing back the life Slipping steadily away in a tumble of figures. Even though when they bleeped me for the last time I didn’t go to see you Not wanting to see the hissing tubes and monitors Of my failing night time contraption The ward now full of clattering voices Filling the growing gap between us Until the final wretched flurry Of strangers’ hands and syringes over your nakedness Beyond my reach in the commotion. I woke up later To soft summer evening light From some blissful place of cradled resignation And I hoped having gone our separate ways You were there now too.
Adrian Hian Ing Sie Sheffield, UK
Night
Darren Harris
1296
Vol 348 • November 9, 1996
Department of poetry
For Mr Burton I still feel bound to you Even though we weren’t alone That long gasping night Creaks and sighs of other bodies Sifting through the curtains But you grasped my hand Then grasped the dark air As if clawing back the life Slipping steadily away in a tumble of figures. Even though when they bleeped me for the last time I didn’t go to see you Not wanting to see the hissing tubes and monitors Of my failing night time contraption The ward now full of clattering voices Filling the growing gap between us Until the final wretched flurry Of strangers’ hands and syringes over your nakedness Beyond my reach in the commotion. I woke up later To soft summer evening light From some blissful place of cradled resignation And I hoped having gone our separate ways You were there now too.
Adrian Hian Ing Sie Sheffield, UK
Night
Darren Harris
1296
Vol 348 • November 9, 1996