Poems for…those who wait
A selection from www.poemsfor.org
Contents
Foreword by Claire Murdoch 4
Introduction by Rogan Wolf 5
These are the Hands by Michael Rosen 8
Prayer in the Waiting Room by Dannie Abse 10
Consultation by Chris Woods 12
Dancing in the Waiting Room by Angus Macmillan 14
Please Take a Seat by Judy Tweddle 16
Bell-ringing by Rogan Wolf 18
The Carers’ June Berry by Rogan Wolf 20
Prison by Mourid Barghouti 22
I have Recalled… by Ra’hel Bluwstein 24
Vinopolis by David Morris 26
Schizophrenia Day by Anon 28
Hotel Gordon by Sarah Wardle 30
I Dance Ala-Igbo by Chikwendụ Anyanwụ 32
Ophelia in London by Janey Antoniou 34
I Am by John Clare 36
Black Tears by Vidya Misra 38
Arrival 1946 by Moniza Alvi 40
Who am I ? by Amrit Dhadwal 42
“A Dentist…” by Anon 44
Come. And Be my Baby by Maya Angelou 46
Loneliness by Sarveshwar Dayal Saxena 48
Midsummer, Tobago by Derek Walcott 50
Swing by Malathy Maitri 52
Cloths of Heaven by W.B.Yeats 54
Plea by Stella Rotenberg 56
Sometimes by Sheenagh Pugh 58
Foreword
I am delighted to write the foreword to this innovative and exciting venture by Central and
North West London NHS Foundation Trust (CNWL).
As our catchment area continues to grow, so does the range of NHS services we provide. It
is important for us to remember that many of those services begin, not at the door of the
treatment or activity room, but just outside that door - in the waiting room or reception
area, where people have to wait for their turn to be seen. However good our services and of course our efforts to achieve excellence in all departments remain unceasing - we
cannot prevent the uncertainty, and in some cases the anxiety, that people must feel in
these waiting places, as they prepare to meet a service practitioner.
I know it myself, of course. I too have sat in many a waiting room, for my own reasons.
We all have to, at some time or other in our lives. From early on, each one of us comes to
know this experience of waiting in uncertainty in a public space for someone to see us - to
re-assure, to confirm, to check, to assess, to act on us in some way, whether we want it or
we don‘t.
We can truly say that, whoever we are - so individual, so unique, each with our different
histories and experiences – in the waiting room, we are all in this together.
The Prince of Wales once urged that NHS health care centres should be “truly fit for the
healing of both body and soul”, and I believe this pamphlet goes some way towards
addressing his concern. While poetry and the other arts cannot of course replace a doctor,
or cure an ailment, they can touch and help us in other ways, speaking to the whole
person as we go through this waiting experience, reminding and reassuring us of our
common humanity and the significance of our inner, subjective and imaginative lives.
The poems in this pamphlet have all been selected from an international project called
Poems for…, founded in 1998 and run by Rogan Wolf. I know Rogan well for his work
as Service User Consultant in the Westminster area, and I am delighted that the Trust has
been able to collaborate with him here too, for this new and creative initiative. The striking
photographs of London which accompany the poems were taken by Marta Demartini and
Hugh Hill whom Rogan knows and asked to contribute.
I commend this pamphlet to you and hope that it provides pleasure and company in our
waiting rooms.
Claire Murdoch
Claire Murdoch
Chief Executive
CNWL
4
Introduction
A collaborative venture
The poems which appear in this pamphlet come from a project which I have run since
1998, called Poems for…
By then I was well established in Westminster as a mental health social work manager.
Initially I was employed by Westminster City Council but then went free-lance, eventually
retiring towards the end of 2013. And through all that time I worked closely with people
at all levels of the organisation now called CNWL. It has therefore been a real pleasure to
engage in this collaborative venture with them.
In fact, roving the patch over the years, I have often tried out the project’s poem-posters
on CNWL territory. The reception area at 209 Harrow Road was one such test-bed (the
Paddington community mental health teams were based there, for a while). The Gordon
Hospital in Pimlico and St Charles Mental Health Centre in north Kensington have also
displayed the poems at different times. And I should not forget that I once went to Peter
Carter, then Chief Executive of CNWL, now of the Royal College of Nursing, and asked for
his advice on funding. Peter said, why not write to Sir Nigel Crisp (the Head of the NHS at
that time)? I did so and was soon receiving funding from NHS Estates. Thank you, Peter.
It is fitting that such a long relationship should now result in this pamphlet. We want
it to be freely available wherever CNWL provides its services. We hope the poems and
photographs will speak to people and offer some human touch.
More on Poems for…
Poems for… publishes small poem-posters online and free of charge for public display
in schools, libraries and healthcare settings. The poem-posters go all over the United
Kingdom, and indeed to every continent in the world.
Many of the poems are bilingual, with fifty-one languages represented so far, besides
English. (Our fifty-first language is Burmese).
The Poems for… website is www.poemsfor.org. Once you register there (free of charge),
you can view and download hundreds of poems, from various collections compiled at
different times over the past fifteen years. However, there are three main collections, and
the poems selected here come from those three. They are called: Poems for…waiting,
Poems for…all ages and Poems for…one world.
All the poems from the waiting collection were especially commissioned, with the express
intention that they should be displayed in healthcare settings, where people wait. So
there are no copyright implications as far as these poems are concerned. In all the other
cases where copyright applies, we were given free permission to publish the poems, on
condition that they were only displayed to ease the wait and for no commercial gain.
More details about the Poems for… project can be found on the website. I will just say
here that, over the years, Poems for… has attracted a significant number of funders.
5
The main ones have been the Arts Council of England and the NHS itself. Others include
the King’s Fund, the Baring Foundation, the Foreign Office, the John Lewis Partnership and
- most recently - NHS Westminster (now replaced by NHS Central London CCG).
I also want to refer to the many people who have written to me over the years, expressing
their enthusiasm for these poems. Here are just four:
Sir David Nicholson, Chief Executive of the UK National Health Service 2006-2014: “The
Poems for… initiative has made a valuable contribution to making NHS waiting rooms
a more welcoming and sensitive environment for patients and the series of poems
celebrating diversity has been particularly well received.”
Andrew Motion, UK Poet Laureate 1999-2009, contributed a poem to Poems for…waiting,
launched our first bilingual collection in 2005, and launched the Poems for… website in
2008. He writes: “[This] is an inspired scheme… I’ve been delighted to be part of it.”
A.L. (Mrs) NHS Receptionist, Wiltshire: “Dear Mr Wolf, I have received the new [bilingual]
Poems for… collection and I am totally delighted with them… One of the most striking
aspects is that no matter what language and what ethnic background, our hopes, feelings
and dreams are the same. Thank you once again…”
AK, ex-psychiatric patient, St Charles Mental Health Centre, north Kensington: “Thank you
so much for sending me a pack of poems. I really enjoy reading the poems… And with
surprise we discover how similar we are. We feel as human beings. Your project helps us
to become aware of ‘one world…’”
The photographs
Marta Demartini and Hugh Hill produced the photographs for this pamphlet. Both are
professional photographers, living in Westminster. Hugh Hill uses CNWL services. My
thanks are due to them for helping me with the selection of their photographs and for
taking such wonderful pictures in the first place.
Last words on the poems
Each poem comes with its own story and reason for inclusion. Those are briefly told in the
short notes beneath each text.
The Poems for… project was originally inspired by a sense of how hollow, impersonal and
fraught the healthcare waiting room can be, however carefully furnished and decorated.
And shouldn’t poetry be more than just some specialised exercise restricted to literary
festivals and high-brow bookshops? Let it sit alongside people in the waiting room, then,
and speak to them there! So, although nowadays most of the project’s poems go to
schools, the waiting room feels like our spiritual home, to the extent that our first title was
precisely that - Poems for the waiting room. Our collaboration with CNWL to produce this
pamphlet has been a real pleasure. It has taken us back to our roots.
Rogan Wolf
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Poems for…waiting | 7
These are the Hands
These are the hands
That touch us first
Feel your head
Find the pulse
And make your bed.
These are the hands
That fill the bath
Mop the floor
Flick the switch
Soothe the sore
These are the hands
That tap your back
Test the skin
Hold your arm
Wheel the bin
Burn the swabs
Give us a jab
Throw out sharps
Design the lab.
Change the bulb
Fix the drip
Pour the jug
Replace your hip.
And these are the hands
That stop the leaks
Empty the pan
Wipe the pipes
Carry the can
Clamp the veins
Make the cast
Log the dose
And touch us last.
Michael Rosen (b. 1946)
Michael Rosen was commissioned to write this poem in 2008, to celebrate the 60th
anniversary of the NHS that year. He was the UK Children’s Laureate at the time and wrote the
poem with children in mind. The response it has received suggests that it has been
appreciated by many adults too. Michael gave the Poems for... project his enthusiastic
permission to reproduce his poem and to translate it into various languages. He will be happy to
know that it has been published here as well.
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9
Prayer in the Waiting Room
Banished from health I enter the unknown
As the Two did stumbling from Paradise.
Never in my life have I felt so alone.
In this doctor’s waiting room, many-eyed,
My censored secrets are married to my fears
Like a shot-gun bridegroom to his bride.
When I was a child I thought blue, I said green
And with a magician’s sleight of hand, jubilant,
Would squeeze apple-pips from a tangerine!
Now, doctor, magic me. Let me be released
From clawing ills, let home be Eden-like
Where, thankfully, I may fast for God or feast.
Dannie Abse (b. 1923)
Dannie Abse is a GP. His poem is one of fifty that were especially commissioned for the Poems
for... project, all on the subject of waiting. At some point, each one of us has to sit and wait,
including our doctors.
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11
Consultation
He doesn’t look too good,
Suit not as snappy.
His tie’s a bit frayed.
He doesn’t look happy.
Domestic difficulties,
Staff shortages, cuts?
In the driving seat
no longer. Driven nuts.
He doesn’t look too hot.
Has he been up all night?
I’ll be supportive “Doc. Are you all right?”
Chris Woods
Like Dannie Abse on the previous page, Chris Woods is a GP and his poem is one of fifty
commissioned by the project Poems for..., all on the subject of waiting. His poem offers an
interesting perspective on the doctor/patient relationship!
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13
Dancing in the Waiting Room
All our living
is in waiting.
In these moments
we find our myriad selves:
anxious, hopeful, trembling,
wishful, fearful, impatient.
All our dancing shadows
are there
flitting in the half-light
of unreason,
crowding together
in fevers of movement,
never still, never one.
Then a voice says ‘Next’,
and a new dance
begins.
Angus Macmillan
Here is another poem from the Poems for...waiting collection, commissioned by the Poems for...
project. This one was originally written in Scottish Gaelic (see opposite page), and translated
into English by the author.
14
Dannsa ‘san t-seòmar-feitheamh
Thà ar beatha gu leir
‘san fheitheamh.
Lorgaidh sinn aig an àm sin
ar sinn-fein do-àireamh:
trioblaideach, dòchasach, critheanach,
miannach, eagalach, mì-fhoighidneach.
Thà.ar faileasan-dannsa gu leir an sin
ag imrich ann an leth-sholus
do mhì-reuson,
dòmhlachadh le-chèile
ann an teasachan do ghluasad,
gun fhois, gun aonachd.
‘S nuair a chanas gùth ‘An ath dhuine’,
bidh danns ùr
ri tòiseachadh.
Angus Macmillan
15
Please Take a Seat
Draw a picture of a seat
that you would rather take
and wonder where to take it.
It will not be one of these.
Draw it in a comfy room
with nine soft things.
Cradle your pain in your hands,
stroke it gently, like a bird,
and place it on the seat that you have drawn.
Sit proudly, smally, catly,
shyly, giantly, and still.
Count the colours you can see,
and fill yourself with light.
Think of twenty words to do with trees,
and words that rhyme with ‘heather’.
Make some up.
Write a poem about the sky.
List all the words you can for ‘wonderful’
and remember you are all of these.
Now imagine you’re invisible
until you’ve counted up to five in Urdu :
eik, doh, tin, char, panj.
You will be seen shortly.
Judy Tweddle
This is another of the fifty poems about waiting, commissioned by the Poems for... project. The
author Judy Tweddle lives near Birmingham.
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17
from
Bell-ringing
...The attainment of perfect rest
is when chaos is held on a point;
and poised, just so,
the moment cups you.
Here in the waiting room I am cupped.
I am held aloft.
My poise is perfect here.
I am almost flying.
Rogan Wolf (b. 1947)
This is an excerpt from a poem dedicated to a mental health carer. There was a time when she
was sitting at the bed-side of her daughter, who was dangerously ill in hospital. The carer was
due to return home to her husband who has ongoing mental health problems. In those
circumstances, the hospital waiting room was a place of peace and refuge for her, however
transitory. The excerpt has been reproduced here with the author’s permission.
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19
The Carers’ June Berry
Caring is the ground of human being
Trees begin
with only ground.
Shyly they cling to it,
desperate for its riches
and continuity.
May the ground
of our June Berry
be rich
and continuous –
so that in years ahead,
past our knowledge,
today’s quiet planting in a small park
of this vast, north-western city
will make a song of praise
each time the wind blows.
May the song
be rich
and the tree vivid
in the June sunshine.
May the weary ground
find voice
in the light-hearted song
of this tree.
Rogan Wolf (b. 1947)
20
The poem opposite was commissioned by Carers Network Westminster. It was recited one
summer’s day in 2003, in Queen’s Park, north Westminster, as part of a tree-planting ceremony.
Karen Buck MP presided, planting a small tree in honour of the work of mental health carers.
June Berry is the name of a particular kind of tree. The poem has been reproduced here with
the author’s permission.
21
Prison
Man said:
Blessed are the birds in their cages
For they, at least, know the limits
Of their prisons.
Mourid Barghouti (b. 1944)
The author of this poem, Mourid Barghouti, lives in Cairo, Egypt. His native Arabic tongue (see
oppposite page) is spoken, of course, not just in Egypt, but in a large number of countries
across the Middle East. With this in mind, Mourid Barghouti asked me to make clear that he is
a Palestinian poet. The poem was translated into English by the poet’s wife Radwa Ashour.
Prison comes from a collection by Mourid Barghouti called A Small Sun, published by The
Poetry Trust, 2003. Reprinted by permission.
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23
“I have Recalled…”
I have recalled,
more than once recalled
the sick heart galloping
like a startled horse:
everything in the light of the full moon
pale and unreal.
And in the silence, suddenly
a hint of fire
that reminds and brings tidings,
makes thirsty and satisfies,
wounds and heals.
Ra’hel Bluwstein (1890-1931)
From Flowers of Perhaps published by The Toby Press in 2008. The poem was translated from
the Hebrew (see opposite page) by Robert Friend with Shimon Sandbank. Reprinted by
permission of the copyright holder, Jean Shapiro Cantu. In Israel the poet is known simply as
Ra’hel (
).
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25
from
Vinopolis
… Don’t worry we will note your concern
Oh we did not know about you
Nobody said you had influence
Just thought you’d be another Spaz
We are a “learning organisation”
But, really, can we ever learn?
David Morris (1959-2010)
The late David Morris lived all his life with serious physical disabilities. He was an
inspirational campaigner, loved and admired by many. At the time of his premature death, he
was working intensively on preparations for the 2012 Olympics, on behalf of the Mayor of
London. As well as writing his own poetry, he made films and explored how different art forms
could be used to promote the cause of equality and human rights. With David’s help, the Poems
for... project contributed to the Mayor of London’s Equalities Report of 2006/2007. Soon before
he died, the project published this poem with his permission.
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27
Schizophrenia Day
Light Day
Poem Day
Light of the day
same for your chances
as long as you may
for we need you to stay.
Poems are for sharing
freeing, mending,
thought-free chances.
Please stay.
Can I live
Can I live
Black Day
Life Day
For complex thought
always give us
the right to come back
and say, never try to
deflect him
for he is one (black) ness.
Life is an art
that cannot be erased.
Can I live
Can I live
Schizophrenia Day
It is the wanting
of stability with the universe
life
when you see
a rainbow.
Can I live
This poem was written in a monthly poetry workshop at the Park Royal Mental Health Centre,
in Brent. The author, who would wish to remain anonymous, was born in the West Indies. He
was being detained in hospital under a section of the Mental Health Act when he wrote his
poem.
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29
Hotel Gordon
An Irishman with holes in his boots,
fresh from the soup kitchen and Victoria station,
a South African, sleeping in night buses,
visitors, not even speaking the language
of the country, let alone the sense of sanity,
women with histories of sad adoptions,
a man from Eton, addicted to drink and crack,
a black man, knifed, and abused as a child,
yet gentle as the father he became at sixteen,
an Italian who lost her mother aged four:
all these I mean, people lost in the in between
of life, as some make good and others fall back.
Sarah Wardle (b. 1969)
Sarah Wardle lives in Pimlico. This poem is one of a series she has written about her experience
as a patient of the Gordon Hospital, a psychiatric unit near the River Thames. Sarah is a poet
with several collections to her name, all published by Bloodaxe Books. She has given the Poems
for... project her permission to reproduce Hotel Gordon.
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31
from
I Dance Ala-Igbo
… I was born with a dance.
That’s the dance of my heartbeat.
I love you when you dance your own dance.
Why will you not love me when I dance mine?
Everyone is born with a dance.
And no one can dance the dance that is not his
Except on borrowed feet.
How come other men dance their dances
But do not let me dance my dance?
My dance is Ala-Igbo
The land where the Sun begins to smile
On Lugard’s discordant notes.
Hoping that one day
Men will know and uphold the difference
Between the face of the rising sun
And the face of the setting sun.
And I proclaim my dance day and night
For a city set on a hilltop cannot be hidden.
Dance what you like.
Dance to the gallery.
I dance Ala-Igbo.
The only dance that sets my life free.
Chikwendụ Anyanwụ (b. 1964)
Chikwendu Anyawu is a Roman Catholic priest from Nigeria. His mother-tongue, Igbo, is just one
of the 200 languages spoken in Nigeria. He wrote this poem in English, but translated it into Igbo
(see opposite page) as well, especially for the Poems for... poster version of his poem. Ala in Igbo
means “land”. This poem is reproduced with the author’s permission.
32
si na
Egwu m bu Ala-Igbo
… E nwere m egwu ejiri muo m
O na-adaba n’egwu obi m.
Ị! na-agba egwu giị, ọo na-atoọ m ụutọo
Giịniị mere m na-agba nkem, ọ naghị atọ gị ụtọ?
Onye Ọbụla nwere egwu ejiri mụọ ya
Ụkwụ añụtara añụta ka eji agba egwu onye ọzọ.
Gịnị medịrị ndi ọzọ na-agba egwu ha
Ha anaghị ekwe m ka m gbaa nke m?
Egwu m bụ Ala-Igbo!
Ebe anwụ si amalite
Na-achịrị egwu agwara-ọgwa Lugard ọchị
N’olile anya na otu ụbọchị
Ndi mmadụ ga-ahụ ihe dị iche
N’ ihu anwụ na awara awara
N’ihu anwụ na-ada ada.
Ma a na m ekwupụta egwu m utụtụ na abalị
Makana obodo arụrụ n’elu ugwu, adịghị ezo ya ezo.
Gbawa egwu nke sọrọ gị
Gbawa ka ajawa gị
Ihe m na-agba bụ Ala-Igbo
Egwu na-atọghapụ m, ka m nwere onwe m!
33
Ophelia in London
You drift in white along the Embankment
with restless hands and voice.
Whispering.
Footfall scrapes and echoes in the night silence,
a shadow leaps to touch yours before passing.
Another tortured soul mutters and slinks in the yellow
lampflare.
Your thoughts bend and race and
slide in chaos, never meeting in coherence and full-stops,
cruel voices, laughing, teasing, mocking in your mind.
Will it be the river My Lady?
The oily, silent Thames
or the thundering rusty train wheels?
The hospitals are full.
Ophelia, Ophelia walking in the back streets
with weary, wide unfocused eyes.
Singing and sad.
The drugs don’t work,
there are no beds.
So in the end there only is the grass-green turf and stone.
Janey Antoniou (1957-2010)
34
This poem won the Perceptions poetry competition for 2006. The competition takes place
annually. It is open to people from all over the country who have experienced mental health
problems. The poem’s author Janey Antoniou, asked me to say expressly that she lived with
schizophrenia. Resident in Harrow, she was a prominent member of the national service user
movement. Ophelia is a character in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. In the play she goes mad and
throws herself into a stream, where she drowns.
35
from
I Am
The Asylum, Northampton
I am; yet what I am none cares or knows;
My friends forsake me like a memory lost;
I am the self-consumer of my woes:
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shades in love and death’s oblivion lost;
And yet I am, and live with shadows tost
Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life nor joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life’s esteems …
John Clare (1793-1864)
The poem from which these lines were taken is among the most famous ever written about
mental disturbance. The poet John Clare lived in the nineteenth century and spent years in the
psychiatric units of that time. But his words resonate through to our present time as well.
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37
Black Tears
They shouted
“You, Paki, go home.
We don’t want you here.”
I felt helpless, homeless.
They grumbled,
“Hey, blackie, you, blackie,
Best not mix with us.”
I felt stripped, naked.
They laughed
At my language
And I became dumb, speechless.
I wanted to cry,
But my tears were frozen.
I was overtaken
By a gripping fear
That my tears might be black.
Vidya Misra (b. 1931)
The author of this poem lives in London but was born in India. Her mother tongue is Hindi. She
wrote this poem in English and gave it to the Poems for... project as part of a self-published
book called Foot Prints in the Sand. On request, she translated her poem into her native Hindi
(see opposite page), for publication as a Poems for... poster.
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39
Arrival 1946
The boat docked at Liverpool.
From the train Tariq stared
at an unbroken line of washing
from the North West to Euston.
These are strange people, he thought an Empire, and all this washing,
the underwear, the Englishman’s garden.
It was Monday, and very sharp.
Moniza Alvi (b. 1954)
Moniza Alvi looks back with some irony at an experience of being an immigrant in England
just after the Second World War. This poem appears in Carrying my Wife, published in 2000 by
Bloodaxe Books. Poems for... was given permission to reproduce the poem for free display in
healthcare waiting rooms and similar venues.
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41
Who am I?
Who am I?
Where am I?
Where did I come from?
Where do I need to be?
I think in English, but I am Punjabi, why?
My hair is loose. My grandparents come, why do I tie a bun?
Why am I a Punjabi girl in England, but an English girl in
Punjab?
Am I a visitor in England, or a visitor in Punjab?
What is my mother tongue?
Where will my destiny take me?
Who am I, Punjabi or English?
Who are you?
Amrit Dhadwal
aged 12
Schools across Medway took part in a multilingual poetry day held in Rochester in July 2009.
This poem is a prize winner of a competition organised for that day. Amrit Dhadwal wrote the
poem in English, her mother-tongue. She then translated it into Punjabi (see opposite page),
which is her parents’ mother-tongue. Competition judges were provided by the Poems for...
project.
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43
“A Dentist...”
A dentist named Archibald Moss
Fell in love with the dainty Miss Ross.
Since he held in abhorrence
Her Christian name, Florence,
He renamed her his dear dental Floss.
Anon.
Some NHS receptionists working in Kensington, London, helped in the selection of this poem
for the Poems for... all ages collection, one of ten especially for young children. It comes from
Measles and Sneezles compiled by Jennifer Curry, and published by Hutchinson Children’s
Books, 1992. It is reprinted here by permission.
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45
Come. And be my baby
The highway is full of big cars
Going nowhere fast
And folks is smoking anything that’ll burn.
Some people wrap their lives around a cocktail glass
And you sit wondering
Where you’re going to turn.
I got it.
Come. And be my baby.
Some prophets say the world is gonna end tomorrow
But others say we’ve got a week or two.
The paper is full of every kind of blooming horror
And you sit wondering
What you’re gonna do.
I got it.
Come. And be my baby.
Maya Angelou (1928-2014)
From Oh Pray my Wings are Gonna fit me Well by Maya Angelou, 1975. Reprinted by
permission of the publishers, Random House, Inc. Maya Angelou was a famous black American
author.
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47
Loneliness
A lonely twig
lying on an empty road
I split it in two
and placed the pieces side by side.
Sarveshwar Dayal Saxena (1927-1983)
This poem written in Hindi (see opposite page) is taken from New Poetry in Hindi published by
Anthem Press, 2004, edited and translated by Lucy Rosenstein. Reprinted by permission.
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49
Midsummer, Tobago
Broad sun-stoned beaches.
White heat.
A green river.
A bridge,
scorched yellow palms
from the Summer-sleeping house
drowsing through August.
Days I have held,
days I have lost,
days that outgrow, like
daughters,
my harbouring arms.
Derek Walcott (b. 1930)
From Sea Grapes, 1976, published by Jonathan Cape. Reproduced by permission of the
publisher. Derek Walcott is a West Indian writer, born in St Lucia. He won the Nobel Prize in
Literature in 1992.
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51
Swing
I don’t know from where
these ropes descend–
I can’t see that far
into the blue depths.
I sit on the wooden seat and swing:
forward and back, up and down.
When the swing drops speed
I can feel pieces of cloud
still sticking to the top of my head.
When the swing gains momentum once more
the tips of my toes
touch and redeem
the sinking sun.
As it starts to darken,
the moon, slithering down the ropes,
drips all over me.
Upon my body, shivering in the cold,
one by one, like pearls,
stars bloom and cluster
as the swing speeds.
Forward and back, up and down,
everywhere
my lightning charge.
Malathy Maitri (b. 1968)
From The Rapids of a Great River: the Penguin Book of Tamil Poetry, New Delhi: Penguin India,
2009. Editors: Lakshmi Holmström, Subashree Krishnaswamy and K. Srilata.
The poem was translated from the Tamil (see opposite page) by Lakshmi Holmström.
Reprinted by permission. Tamil is the language of the minority race living in Sri Lanka.
52
53
Cloths of Heaven
Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
W.B.Yeats (1865-1939)
This poem has been reproduced by permission of the copyright-holder, Michael Yeats, the
poet’s son. When we enter the doctor’s surgery, we are carrying not just our symptoms, our
troubles, but our dreams.
54
55
Plea
Pray grant me the strength
to want to take
notice of everything in life
and the wish to treat
all living things
gently.
Stella Rotenberg
(1915-2013)
From Shards, published by the Edinburgh Review, 2003. Reprinted by permission. Stella
Rotenberg was born in Vienna but fled to Britain in 1939, just escaping the Nazis. This poem
was written in England, during her older age. It was translated from the German (see opposite
page) by Donal McLaughlin and Stephen Richardson.
56
Bitte
Kraft, darnach zu trachten
Alles Leben zu beachten, zu beachten!
Und Behutsamkeit im Umgang mit allem Leben
Sei mir gegeben.
Stella Rotenberg (b. 1915)
57
Sometimes
Sometimes things don’t go, after all,
from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel
faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don’t fail,
sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.
A people sometimes will step back from war;
elect an honest man; decide they care
enough, that they can’t leave some stranger poor.
Some men become what they were born for.
Sometimes our best efforts do not go
amiss; sometimes we do as we were meant to.
The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
that seemed hard frozen: may it happen for you.
Sheenagh Pugh (b. 1950)
From Selected Poems by Sheenagh Pugh, 1990, published by Seren. Reproduced by permission
of the publisher.
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59
Poems for...those who wait
A selection from www.poemsfor.org
The poems - The poems for this booklet were supplied by the
Poems for… project, founded by Rogan Wolf in 1998. It supplies
poem-posters free of charge for public display. The poems go to
schools, libraries, embassies and healthcare settings all over the
UK and far beyond. Funding has come from the Arts Council, the
NHS, the Foreign Office and the John Lewis Partnership, among
others. Many of the poems are bilingual.
The Poems for… website is www.poemsfor.org
The project was originally inspired by a desire to bring some soul
to the healthcare waiting room, which can be a lonely, fraught
and impersonal place. Might a few poems help improve things,
sitting alongside those who wait, in the same way that Poems on
the Underground can help people get through the London rush
hour? The project’s reach has spread wider since its beginnings,
but this collaboration with CNWL to bring poetry into its waiting
rooms has taken Poems for… back to its roots.
The photographs - Marta Demartini and Hugh Hill produced
the photographs for this pamphlet. Both are professional
photographers and digital artists, living in Westminster. Their
respective website addresses are: martademartini.com and
www.hughhillphotography.com
Design & layout - Portugal Prints. Portugal Prints is
Westminster Mind’s arts project. It offers a programme of
creative workshops and emotional support to people
experiencing mental health problems.
for better mental health
Westminster
Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust
(CNWL) has sponsored this initiative. It is an experienced
provider of integrated services covering every aspect of physical
and mental health. With almost 7,000 staff, the Trust provides
healthcare to a third of London’s population and Milton Keynes,
and also to parts of Kent, Surrey, Sussex and Hampshire.
Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust, CNWL
Stephenson House, 75 Hampstead Road, London, NW1 2PL
www.cnwl.nhs.uk © CNWL Poems For...those who wait, June 2014