TERMINUS

indeed there’s no theatre
in this department of the hospital.

DO NOT RESUSCITATE —
a restful rule: no crash
trolley, no scurry and dash
(apart from visiting children),
no futile breaking of fragile or ageing ribs.

Here they’re no longer fighting
death, or screening its presence
from other nervous patients;
here nurses nurse: clean,
feed and, as far as they can, diminish pain.

No fussing about flowers —
they overflow each room
and spill a garden in the corridor:
the resident cat sleeps in a perfumed bower.

A brisk consultant comes —
assesses, prescribes and leaves;
nurses and relatives take charge again.

“Please could you check the driver?”
Staff purses her lips,
tilts, twiddles, taps,
checks catheter and drips,
records her intervention in the notes.

“She’s breathing hard again.”
The oldest of the nurses
tows in a suction machine
and draws thick fluid from the rasping throat.
“There ... mmm ...” she croons
as if to a child — I guess
she does not even know
she speaks, so intent she is
on her task, with steady eye and practised hand.

It is calm and ordered here:
the boundary is clear
between what’s possible
and what is not,
as lives fall apart.

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