for Dinçer Aktuerk
I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.
T.S. Eliot, “Preludes”
Writing poetry is no more a vocation than good health is.
B. Pasternak, “Dr Zhivago”
We all have two lives. The second begins when we realise that we only have one.
Jutta Vinzent
When they broke into my chest
the surgeons swarmed in
to cut and clamp and sew and drain and swab
the things they do when you
are not at home
Where was I? Out
like a life
Waking wounded now in tangled tubes
to see the doctors lined to welcome me
so very pleased with themselves
The wound
is a red line I must not cross
It marks a raid on an inarticulate heart
a breach a robust attempt
on a wall not previously pierced
The flesh the pain the ache the sore
instructs me
I have been discovered
by a vast tenderness