One's fingers gravitate there endlessly,
Like rivers of milk.
A thousand times they have changed
My hospital linen,
Soiled with fatty whiteness -
Ten yells hurl
Towards the open door of the ward.
The corridor, trembling in ten bands of delirium,
Tells a fairytale about plastic trees,
Trees decorated with glass-eyed baubles.
Send to me in here
A single hair of my mother's,
Or a teaspoonful of lilac flowers.
It's bad here.
Here my children sit
In the carers' pockets, stuck with navel cord.
And on handkerchiefs full of dried slime,
Their skin is scrubbed.
Why do they take bits of my flesh about in a pocket?
They can't fit any more faces, swollen with spite,
Into the wards
And they carry the poisonous cheeks
Out of the windows into the streets.
There they amuse themselves
Looking at the endless movement of my fingers
And can't understand
That I hold the whole world!

Translation: 2007, Donald Rayfield