Friday 24 February 2023

THE DEATH SUITE

 

                   The Death Suite  



 

In hospital

my diary thins in concert with my body:

Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday?

I’ll be ill.




Doctor, doctor!

There’s a corpse in my room.

In fact there are fifty.

Am I not entitled to be spooked?

 


 

This is the way

to the Bitter Suite,

the place in which they learn if something’s

looking rather bad.


 


The nasty news

was going to be that I will die.

But now I think the matter through

that isn’t even news.




I've been dying so long

one day at a time 

and never quite felt it.

Now I can feel!





     The art of losing

     may not be hard to master,

     but it seems a big ask

     to pitch right in to losing everything at once.




We know

the runner will finish the race.

The interest’s entirely

in the when. 

 


I might have guessed...

I was born the same year

as Michael Jackson, Prince and Keith Haring -

and look where that got them.



               


Is that the dead bell?

It’s surprisingly quiet,

tinkling the odds -

but quiet can be insistent.


              

Death?

I know, it’s only a matter of timing.

Yet think of the difference that makes

when I’m playing tennis!

                


So much for my plan

to be a surprisingly vigorous

90 year old who does well in his age group

because all the strong players have died or given up.




'We're all gonna die'

I've no problem with that -

yet somehow

I’d sooner not be told so by a doctor.


 

Let’s say the aim

is dying young, at least at heart, yet maximally late.

I’m on track for the first, I guess,

but unsure of the second.




Should I take offence

at the waste of my sunset years?

Or feel pleased to be spared

the painful elongation of decline?


 

I’d rather like

to file past death and back to life.

I’ll ask the doctor

what can be arranged.


           


‘Quality not quantity’

would make a better mantra

did I not fear

that my quality’s all in the past.


           



Lack of practice can explain

why I don’t know how to die:

imagine discovering, this late on,

that you don’t know how to live. 


             

Good news

I've reached my diet target of 11 stone.

Less good news:

that's on the way to the world beyond weight.

 



            

I’m not

stopping. If death can’t stop for me,

that’s tough -

I will not be compliant.

 


‘That’s life’

they say, by which they might mean

it’s made unique

by how it includes its opposite.

 


Call that a dominion?

Birth’s in charge: for if there weren’t

more births than deaths,

death itself would die.




The flip side of death

is the life to be found

in sardonically mocking

its pretensions.




Even as a good republican

I feel slightly sad for a queen

who did little to reinforce my convictions…

but I’d take her 96 mark in a flash!



Life

should be seized

by the scruff of the day -

just in case your neck is on the line.

 

         


I don’t mean

to denigrate death:

it’s actually my second favourite

state in which to be.




I dismiss the possibility

of life after death.

What matters is how much 

life there was before it.  

 

I wonder

how it’s going to work out

for Truss and Putin and Xi Jinping.

Maybe I’d rather not know.

 


Even the wonderful Steph

will benefit: spared the carting back and forth

of books and tech and clothes and suddenly-fancied foods

to meet my eccentric requests.


         


The problems with embracing

in Marvell’s fine and private place

are mildly foreshadowed

by all these tubes.


         


I know Steph loves me

as I love her.

But will she love me when I can’t?

It would be easier for her if she didn’t.


           


I don’t expect

to arrive in any undiscovered country.

Is that one hell of pity

or a heaven-sent stroke of luck?



 

Should I regret

that I'm an atheist?

Hardly: I could be a believer,

but that wouldn’t make God exist.


           


If I feel I’m hammering

on paradise's portal

either I’m dreaming or I won’t get in,

given that I’ve never confessed my sins. 



 

And if God does prove himself to be

after I've crossed the bar,

I fear I won't believe in him still,

given what he allows.

 


I lie awake

with wondering:

what's the point in sleeping now

with so much sleep to come?

     



It's cold

There’s wind.

My new neighbour’s talking in his sleep.

2.19 is dark.

       

              


It seems a shame 

to pre-decease my mother

when she's provided such a template

for how to do old age.


         

           


The guarantee I’ve always had

that this will happen

leaves me no excuse –

I really should be ready.



Is death the same state

as you’re in before life?

It sounds pretty good

to return to pre-existence. 




I suppose it’s time to ask

Am I happy with my life,

given the defining frame of death?

Or do I feel the deep regret of the inauthentic?



Let’s be positive

Death is the very purpose of life,

the end we’re bound to strive towards

and must, therefore, be good.

 


Rosie, Anna, Thomas, Rowan

how will you grow up?

As children 

you are definitely grand.

   

 


It doesn’t surprise me

that death has undone so many.

It’s just that I’m not done

with not yet having been undone.



What’s it like?

We lack the data.

Maybe that which can’t be verified

cannot be said to exist?

 


It makes no sense  

to fear the inevitable:

how would the practical point of that

compute?

 

          

 

Don’t gloat, death

After all,

you’re only getting me

the same old once.

 

            


You think that's a sting?

I’d take your poison any day

in preference to a life

in the drip-drip grip of agony.



Stilled life

is not for me.

I’m moving on

as fast as I can go.


               


I’ve heard it said

that life is just boredom and fear.

I wish it was,

for then I wouldn’t worry about using it up.


       

The consensus is

that immortality’s inescapably tedious stretch

is not the way to go.

And yet I wonder.




I know the mind

has cliffs of fall,

but I’m not going down,

will stay upbeat whatever the whatever.




My life may be

weaker than death,

but all life is out-powered:

I haven’t been singled out.



Enough of this

too-too-sharp way to concentrate the mind:

I’m ready for the doctors to admit

they got the diagnosis wrong.



 

Notice

how respectfully the surgeon steered clear

of my roundabout button –

as set out, not doubt, in The Bellyway Code.



I’m a generous man

After years of low cost the NHS is spending big

on me. Yet I’d happily put my budget back

to where it used to be.



This is the efficient life

No cooking time, as hospital.

No eating time, as nil by mouth.

No pissing time, as catheter in place.



For four days now

I’ve been on nil by mouth

and fitted with a catheter -

but still the patient toilet waits...




Am I ready

to head for the great horizon?

Maybe I am, but the gap remains large

between ready and willing…







I accept

that 1958-2023 is likely.

But ending in eight would give my dates a tidy ring.

And 2058 would be neatest of all!

 

 

Why worry about death?

It isn’t an event in life.

But dying is: can I please

miss that bit out?




I guess it would be interesting

to see posterity,

but I’m happy to postpone 

the opportunity.


                 


Consider the options

Buried alive. Boiled alive.

Hung, drawn and quartered. A thousand cuts.

Lucky old me.




If I should die 

think only this of me:

I must have written this 

before I went.


               

Life

is a death sentence.

I knew that – but I had hoped

to finish with a more complete



Notes

Context

After admission to Southampton General Hospital, aged 64, on 17 September 2022 for sepsis, explorations of the underlying issue indicated cancer of the bowel and liver, with a likelihood that it had also spread to the lungs.  That seemed to point in just one direction: I found myself thinking about death, and jotting down jestingly macabre thoughts. Meantime, I was feeling fit enough to roam the hospital corridors, taking the accompanying 64 photographs of 'hospital still life'. Some of the poems mention my immediate family: mother Shirley, unmatchable wife Steph, children Ursula, Kim and Greg, and my six grandchildren - all wonderfully supportive, along with my brothers and scores of artist friends. It proved, incidentally, very easy to outlive the prime ministership of Liz Truss ('I wonder'). I was moved around the hospital a fair amount, but spent a dozen days in Bay D of Ward D8 - Gastro Hepatology - and that's where I wrote most of these poems (the staff in D8 were great, incidentally). I lost two stone between the opening and closing photographs: the last followed on from bowel surgery ('Notice'), after which I was moved, initially to my own room for four days due to the ward I came from having had a covid alert (as per 'For four days now') then onto a post-surgical ward, where the last few poems were written in less luxury. I returned home on 11 October.

References

I'm not the first to deal with death, and when I looked at what I'd written, it wasn't too hard to spot echoes of some of the greats: 

Seneca ('I've been dying so long') - On the Shortness of Life, c. 49 AD

William Shakespeare ('I don't expect') – Hamlet, Act III, Scene 1, published 1602

The King James Bible (‘You think that's a sting?') - I Corinthians 15: 55, 1611

John Donne ('Call that a dominion?') – Holy Sonnet 10, 1633

Andrew Marvell ('The problems with embracing') - To His Coy Mistress, 1681

Arthur Schopenhauer ('Let's be positive') - The World as Will and Idea, 1818

Emily Dickinson ('I'm not') – collected poems 712, 1863. Steph responded to all manner of odd requests, including in Emily Dickinson’s collected poems as well as my laptop, the cover of which it rests on in the photo: I planned to read all 1,775 in hospital but managed only 600. 

Gerard Manley Hopkins ('I know the mind') - No Worst, There Is None, 1885

Alfred Lord Tennyson ('And if God does prove himself to be') – Crossing the Bar, 1899

Rupert Brooke ('If I should die') – The Soldier, 1914

Ludwig Wittgenstein ('Why worry about death?') - Tractatus Logico-philosophicus, 1921

T.S. Eliot ('It doesn't surprise me') - The Wasteland, 1922

Martin Heidegger (‘I suppose it’s time to ask’) – Being and Time, 1927

Dylan Thomas ('Call that a dominion?') - And Death Shall Have No Dominion, 1933

Virginia Woolf (‘My life may be’) - The Death of the Moth, 1942

Sylvia Plath ('Is that the dead bell?') – Death & Co, 1962

Philip Larkin ('I've heard it said') - Dockery and Son, 1963

Georges Perec (‘Lack of practice can explain’) - The Man Who Sleeps, 1967

Bob Dylan ('If I feel I'm hammering') – Knocking on Heaven's Door, 1973

Seamus Heaney ('I dismiss the possibility') - Whatever You Say, Say Nothing, 1975

Elizabeth Bishop (‘The art of losing’) – One Art, 1976

Julian Cope ('Am I ready')  I Remember This Life, 2008

Looking more broadly across the sequence as a whole, I can see that Donne (type of wit), Wittgenstein (exploratory mode), Larkin (relish for gloom) and Perec (the infra-ordinary) are my presiding spirits, and that doesn't surprise me.

Keith Haring (1958-1990), Michael Jackson (1958-2009) and Prince (1958-2016) all pre-deceased me by a fair margin. 

Photographs

The pictures are glimpses of a major hospital, employing 12,000 staff, but without showing any visitors, staff or patients (except for me).  I've never seen so many dead flies in a light fitting as there were in an isolation room in which I spent one night ('Doctor, doctor!'). There are enough endoscopy rooms to make up a fateful suite, and this is where my colonoscopy confirmed the primary site of my cancer ('This is the way'). That isn't a bell cord ('Is that the dead bell?'), but the emergency pull in a loo. The candles ('We're all gonna die') and the tribute to Queen Elizabeth II ('Even as a good republican') were in the hospital's chapel. The black shoes ('If I feel I'm hammering') belonged to a prison officer, sitting behind a curtain guarding the patient opposite me at one point.  Many notice boards around the hospital feature the planned account of cleaning standards and performance ('What's it like') in which all that is visible are the instructions for using the frame! - that said, the premises were generally clean.  'I've been dying so long', ‘Lack of practice can explain’, ‘I lie awake’, 'Let’s be positive’ and ‘I know the mind’ all show views from my window-side bed. The image for 'That's Life' is a cardboard urine bottle left, somewhat paradoxically, in one of one of my ward's toilets. Sticking with bodily liquids, perhaps the least attractive images show my bile bag ('You think that's a sting?') and commode ('Enough of this') - though I took the latter photograph to record what sister Maria asked me to keep back for her... there's no accounting for taste. Finally, 'If I should die' shows a corridor poster of a microscopic photograph of bone by Professor Alan Boyde.




About Me

My photo
Southampton, Hampshire, United Kingdom
I was in my leisure time Editor at Large of Art World magazine (which ran 2007-09) and now write freelance for such as Art Monthly, Frieze, Photomonitor, Elephant and Border Crossings. I have curated 20 shows during 2013-17 with more on the way. Going back a bit my main writing background is poetry. My day job is public sector financial management.

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