If I’m Early

Every other day I follow the route

of the Midland Railway

to where it cuts through

St Pancras Old Church Cemetery.

I might go into the church

and heave a sigh or two

before continuing via a gate

set in the cemetery wall

to the Mary Rankin Wing

of St Pancras Hospital.

As a young man, Thomas Hardy

supervised the removal of bodies

from part of the cemetery

to make way for the trains.

He placed the headstones

round an ash tree sapling,

now grown tall, where I stop sometimes

to look at the stones

crowding round the old tree

like children listening to a story.

A Game of Dialysis

The home team appears

in a blue strip, while the visitors

keep on their street clothes.

We find our positions

from the file with our name on it

placed beside our bed.

Now all we can do is wait

for the opposition to make a move.

We don’t like our chances.

The action commences

with the home team wandering about,

or making a tour of the circuit.

Certain moves are typical –

lengthwise, for example,

carrying something,

is a popular move, or scoring points

by passing back and forth

between the glove dispenser

and the needle disposal box.

The visitors can only look on

as the enemy’s game plan emerges.

We score by keeping quiet

about our disadvantages,

or saying something funny.

Whether anyone gets hurt

depends on who is marking whom.

The blues fan out round the room.

Each of them is doing something difficult

to somebody lying down.

The Art of Needling

You find out early on

that some of the nurses

are better than others

at the art of needling.

You have to ascertain

who’s on duty

that knows what they’re doing,

someone familiar

with your fistula arm

and beg him to ‘put you on’.

If he’s any good

he’ll take his time

raising or lowering the bed,

laying out his things on the tray.

He won’t forget the spray.

He’ll listen to the ‘bruit’

produced by your fistula.

He’ll note the ‘thrill’ of it,

feel it with his finger.

Only then will he go in.

Even so, a wayward needle

can pierce a fistula wall,

causing a ‘blow’ to occur.

Then you have to go to A&E

for a fistulaplasty.

The Dog

A dog has got hold of my arm

and is dragging me down.

Its canines pierce an artery.

Its entrails twitch with my blood.

Whenever I am brought in

for further questioning,

the dog stands over me,

grinding its teeth in my flesh.

It’s like being nailed to the floor

and told to relax.

Blood spurts like a confession.

This is what dogs are for,

to find out who you are.

I watch its eyes going round,

analysing the evidence.

I’ll admit to anything.

The Angel of the Needles

The beauty of the Indian nurse

puts the fear of God in me

when she approaches my bed

carrying the blue tray.

Did she have to take a needling test

like other mortals?

Or did they let her in

for being one of the angels?

I want her to like me,

but I have to look away

when she strips the paper from the needles

and bends over me.

She applies the tourniquet

and lays a finger on the vein.

Something about her touch

makes the needles melt in my flesh.

She takes away the pain

by telling me in a mournful tone

about her son Ibrahim

who is bullied at school

for the mixed pigments on his face.

Ray’s Way

Ray Blighter appears in the doorway

of the dialysis ward

in all his ruined finery –

waistcoat, buttonhole, blazer,

eyebrows dashed in with mascara –

and pauses for a moment to ensure

all eyes are upon him.

‘MY NAME IS BOND’ he shouts

to the assembled company.

‘JAMES FUCKING BOND.’

He sets off down the line of beds,

muttering, looking straight ahead,

yellowing grey flannels

flapping round his ankles.

He’s two hours late,

having been ‘run over by a bus’,

but God help anyone who’s taken

his precious corner bed.

If the rabbi is there ahead of him

he’s liable to turn around

and go home again.

He sets out his life

on the table across his bed –

beer cans, biscuits, betting slips,

a hairbrush, aftershave,

a radio tuned to Radio 2,

the only one allowed on the ward

because Ray is a ‘character’.

He goes and stands in the fire exit

for his ritual ‘last cigarette’

before he kills himself.

‘Do you smoke Morland Specials

with the three gold rings?’ I ask.

Ray lifts a coal-black eyebrow.

‘Do you think I look like Sean Connery?’

He acted with Sean, he tells me,

in several James Bond films,

including Live and Let Die.

‘And no, not as a bleeding extra!’

When he goes on to describe his role

in Bridge on the Fucking River Kwai

the penny drops.

Trapped in his own Japanese

prisoner-of-war camp for ten years,

he’s lied and cursed his way free.

‘I won’t be coming in on Monday’,

he tells me confidentially.

‘I’m going to the fucking races.’

Of course he is. I may be there myself.

Diality

The shock of remembering,

having forgotten for a second,

that this isn’t a cure,

but a kind of false health,

like drug addiction.

It performs the trick

of taking off the water

which builds up in your system,

bloating your body,

raising your blood pressure.

It sieves you clean of muck

for a day or two,

by means of a transparent tube

full of pinkish sand

hanging next to your machine.

Your kidneys like the idea

of not having to work any more

and gradually shut down,

leaving you dependent.

Then you stop peeing.

Dialysis is bad for you.

You feel sick

most of the time, until the end.

The shock of remembering,

having forgotten for a second.

Zombie

I’m technically dead, they tell me,

but I remember being alive

as if it were yesterday.

I’m covered in mud, like a zombie,

swimming around

in the storms of a new grave.

I remember the world above

and what it was like up there,

thanks to a friend

who sucks my blood for me.

He keeps me alive

in the sense that memories are alive.

Going Home

Leaving behind the Gothic frowns

of the former workhouse, I pass through a gate

into a churchyard overhung by great trees,

where the nurses go to smoke.

Mary Wollstonecraft’s tomb,

where Shelley proposed to her daughter,

escaped demolition by Thomas Hardy

and seems to be plunging off into a storm.

Shelley’s heart, wrapped in a brown paper parcel,

Hardy took by train to Bournemouth,

sitting in a first class compartment

with the heart on his knee.