Undying Read online

  your humerus, your pelvis and your spine.

  The scans and dyes allow each one to shine.

  The Second-Last Time

  We never knew

  when it would be

  the last time.

  It was important

  not to know.

  We made love

  the second-last time,

  always the second-last time,

  as many times

  as time allowed.

  We’d go to bed

  and put our heads

  together, trying to find

  where you had gone.

  Your illness was a vast

  terrain, but somehow

  again and again

  we found you.

  Refractory

  The killing’s done offstage.

  On all the websites, no one ever dies

  of your disease. They swap advice,

  give updates on their holidays,

  celebrate anniversaries

  of their remissions.

  They cheer each other on.

  Three thousand musketeers.

  Myeloma’s on the run.

  Then, one by one,

  they falter in their flight.

  Where do they land?

  Why don’t we hear from them again?

  Why is a search party never sent?

  Each time a cancer buddy disappears,

  she, or he, winks out without a trace,

  and, like the smoothest sleight-of-hand,

  a trembling newbie, armed with fears,

  a valiant doctor, symptoms, and a treatment plan,

  slips in to take their place.

  Old People In Hospital

  Possessing, of their own,

  only a toothbrush and a comb,

  like victims of earthquake, fire or flood

  fleeing from the threat of death or blood

  they’ve come

  for the sanction to go home, restored.

  Instead, bored

  in their appointed cots they lie

  waiting to be cured at last, and die.

  Darling Little Dress

  On the way

  to the hospital today

  I saw a darling little dress.

  No, not too little: just the right

  size for you now.

  The label says

  14

  but you know how that can mean

  almost anything.

  I’d say

  it’s more like a 12,

  but not a tight 12.

  No, not at all.

  Stylish, light and well-designed

  in stretchy fabric.

  Quite a find.

  No, not baggy, not what you would call

  a tent. I only meant . . . elasticised.

  There is give, that’s what I’m saying;

  there is give.

  The sleeves have cuffs to stow

  a tissue in, but otherwise

  are loose. But not too loose.

  Just comfy on your swollen arms.

  Not that your arms are

  very swollen, just slightly

  lacking muscle tone

  after the broken bone,

  just in need of exercise.

  The bosom?

  Promising, I think, at first glance.

  There’s a real chance this might be

  nearly optimal.

  You’d look shapely; as shapely

  as possible

  now that you can’t wear a bra

  anymore, and now your figure

  has grown bigger.

  The cons? Well, nothing much.

  The neckline – I should let you know –

  is not as low as you require.

  How high? Here, where I touch.

  I see you frown, but listen:

  this gown, it stretches,

  so when the crimson flushes come,

  you could simply pull it down.

  And at the back? It comes up high,

  and I suspect – without seeing it on,

  you realise – that it might minimise

  the hump that dexamethasone

  has dumped in there.

  It has no stitches to tear,

  no buttons to strain,

  no zips to pull in vain.

  It would go well with your hair –

  no, not the brown you have on now,

  another one.

  Will it cover your bum? I’m not sure,

  that’s why I took this picture

  for you to study at your leisure.

  Yes, I’m aware that all your tights

  are threadbare at the rear,

  the seams half-perished and worn through,

  but I only thought: this dress

  would look so beautiful on you

  even in bed.

  But yes, I must concede, now that we

  have the evidence before us,

  it does appear quite small.

  I could have sworn it said

  14, but I agree, it doesn’t look it.

  Which maybe is the asset of it,

  now that your favourite smocks

  are on the ample side,

  your chemotherapy couture,

  your fluid retention range.

  This darling little frock

  would make a lovely change.

  But no, now that you mention it,

  I don’t believe they had it

  in a 16.

  It was a one-off,

  end-of-season sort of thing,

  that I saw on a rail

  in a sunny street, not far

  from a busy intersection

  full of healthy women walking

  briskly past this dress

  in the opposite direction

  from where you are.

  Escape Attempts

  A tunnel under a prison

  dug out with a spoon.

  It has been done.

  Don’t tell me it has not been done.

  Let me put your slippers on.

  We’re going to get you home.

  Place one foot on this stair.

  One hand on this banister.

  Bend at the knee (the stronger one).

  Ascend by fifteen centimetres.

  It can be done.

  It has been done.

  Pretend your legs were broken

  in an accident, and now

  are on the mend.

  This is not about cancer.

  This is about the Achilles tendon.

  This is about the soleus and the tibial nerve.

  This is routine convalescence.

  This is common physio.

  Take my arm, let’s go.

  Today, two stairs.

  Tomorrow, three.

  Twenty to get into the plane.

  We’re going to get you home.

  We’re going to get you fit.

  We’ll get you back in shape.

  You’ll wear clothes of your own

  at last, and shoes, real shoes,

  and your hair will grow.

  It all starts with a single step.

  It all depends on how resolutely

  you desire escape.

  Pretend your legs were broken.

  A few stairs and I’ll let you sleep.

  It’ll be easier than it was before,

  you’ll see. Trust me. Please.

  Just take my arm.

  Or let me take yours.

  Let’s get this done.

  Don’t be

  like that.

  Nipples

  Nipples all over you.

  Excited peaks of plasma.

  Red, purple, some with areolas.

  Your flesh is riotous with the pleasure

  of predatory cells.

  Each nipple swells

  a bit more each day.

  I have decided

  to watch the one on your foot.

  Watch it lovingly

 
; until it flattens

  and disappears.

  Or until you do.

  Whichever happens

  first.

  Ten Tumours On Your Scalp

  Reeling from what I had

  uncovered,

  I washed the blood and sweat

  out of your wig.

  It came up good as new.

  Ready to go back on you.

  Switzerland

  You tried to phone but

  Dignitas was busy.

  You begged me, so I wrote instead.

  My typing fingers made vibrations

  on your bed.

  But Switzerland gave no reply.

  Or, If Only

  It’s so easy to die

  when you’d really rather not.

  The menu of quick demises

  is marvellously ample.

  You can, for example:

  slip on a leaf and break your neck,

  be squashed by falling rocks,

  be splattered by a train,

  be zapped by an electric shock,

  burst a vessel in the brain,

  sink with a cruise ship,

  choke on a fruit pip,

  be stung by an exotic mite,

  perish in a freak fire,

  bleed to death from a bird bite,

  be stabbed in someone else’s fight,

  expire from a hiccup of the heart,

  be eaten by an alligator,

  be gassed by a faulty radiator,

  discover suddenly

  that you have a fatal allergy.

  This air freshener – ‘Magnolia Vanilla’ –

  issues a stern warning

  that solvent abuse can kill

  instantly.

  How strange, then, that you and I

  have so few options open to us.

  We’d jump at any offer.

  Any speedy death would do us.

  Is there no amenable jihadist

  who could be persuaded to behead you?

  We’d be quite willing to insult Islam

  if some resolute young man

  could bring his sword to Parkside Hospital

  (on the District line to Wimbledon,

  then catch the 93 bus).

  Or, if only

  we could transport you to Westminster,

  where armed police stand ready

  for terrorists to jump out of the mob.

  Your morphine pump – that gizmo squirting dope

  into your gut – would make a suspicious bump

  if hidden under a shirt. We could hope

  it looked enough like a bomb

  for the cops to mow you down.

  Or, if only

  we could buy a ticket to the top

  of Tokyo Tower, and smash a window for you.

  Or, if only – let’s be less ambitious –

  you could go to Disneyland, and

  unleash yourself from a roller coaster,

  fly into the sky of Anaheim or Marne-la-Vallée.

  Or, if only you could walk (for goodness’ sake,

  how simple should this be to organise?)

  just a few steps from your bed

  into a cab, and from the cab onto a busy motorway,

  and, in a wink, be dead.

  Instead, we wait.

  Each muscle takes its time to lapse.

  Each corpuscle spins out its collapse.

  We wait for your cells to decay,

  one by one.

  We wait for each nerve to succumb,

  nerve by nerve.

  Observe, minute by minute,

  millimetre by millimetre,

  the tumours take

  what they do not deserve.

  Another Season

  On your bedside cabinet:

  a wristwatch with a very quiet tick.

  You are too sick to wear it anymore.

  It’s the old-fashioned kind.

  It does not know it is forgotten.

  It takes up hardly any space.

  Its face points at the window.

  It sees the trees in miniature.

  You do not see the trees at all.

  Spring it was, when you last wore this watch.

  Now it is summer, and you do not know.

  Your watch is keeping time for you.

  When you are ready, its tiny hands

  will show they never stopped

  being utterly

  loyal.

  Cowboys

  As a child, watching westerns on TV,

  I knew cowboys

  could be shot and not

  die.

  They were only dead when

  a trickle of blood

  appeared at one side

  of their mouth,

  down to the chin.

  That trickle meant

  The End.

  Now I watch you sleep

  and, at the corner of your mouth,

  that same dark cedilla.

  Together last night we

  laboured to clean your teeth.

  You with your spastic hands,

  me with toothbrush and plastic pick.

  Chicken crud between your molars

  lodged stubborn as your cancer.

  We won

  in the end

  but fought a little too

  hard.

  Fluid Balance

  I’ve kept a measure of your sips,

  your shuffling visits to the loo,

  captured in a blue dish inside the bowl.

  The 75 ml of milk

  in your corn flakes.

  The soup, the custard.

  The bags of saline.

  The bags of blood.

  The platelets, thick as the orange sauce

  on the duck you never ate.

  I ate it for you.

  I drink your water for you, too,

  in these last days when

  I’m no longer measuring.

  Purring

  Purring was your favourite sound.

  Having slept all night at your feet,

  the cat – whichever of our cats was then alive –

  would wake up when you finally stirred.

  You’d lure him, or her, onto your chest

  and the joyful noise would thereupon begin,

  released by a tickle under the chin.

  How many times have I lain by your side

  while your hands caressed sweet-smelling fur,

  and the best part of an hour slipped by

  as a rapturous mammal purred?

  Now that same noise can be heard:

  an animal presence, with us, in this room.

  All those who enter, listen:

  where’s it coming from?

  That rhythmic, guttural thrum,

  that gentle growling in the diaphragm.

  It’s your lungs: your lungs are purring.

  Presumptuous fluid burbles in your breast.

  A nurse comes and injects midazolam.

  A doctor recommends glycopyrronium.

  They’re keen for you to die

  serenely, like a baby with its lips around

  a nipple of morphine. They know what kind

  of death is best; they do not like

  what’s happening to your breath. Their mission

  is to stop this bestial sound occurring.

  This purring.

  This purring.

  This purring.

  The Time You Chose

  It was a smallish space

  and we lay close together.

  No doubt, to some extent,

  we breathed each other’s breath.

  The angle of my chair

  in tandem to your bed

  meant that I couldn’t see your face,

  although I was an arm’s length from your head.

  I dozed. The hour was late.

  You were, I’m almost certain, unaware

  that I was even there.

  I dozed. You were
not dead.

  The bedclothes rose and fell.

  You were helpless and scary,

  like a bear in labour,

  like a newborn baby.

  For twenty minutes, thirty maybe,

  my eyes were closed.

  That was the time you chose.

  Tight Pullover

  In life, you did not relish

  being hugged by strange men.

  Now, the mortuary van is parked

  right near Reception in the dark

  at the climax of this hellish night,

  and two guys in fancy suits –

  one young, one not so young –

  are here to rendezvous.

  They treat you gently,

  undress you with gloved fingers,

  roll you on your side,

  roll you on your back,

  roll you into their arms,

  clutch you to their chests.

  They shroud you in gauzy white,

  wrap you up, immobilise

  your limbs, you, who panicked

  when caught in a tight pullover.

  In minutes they are satisfied.

  I have watched but not touched,

  impotent to spare you from their grasp.

  I thank them, these strange men.

  These men you never knew

  and did not wish to know.

  These men who take you with them

  to their van.

  II

  F.W. Paine Ltd, Bryson House, Horace Road, Kingston

  This is the way it is:

  we’ll spend the night apart.

  I have your new address

  on a printed card

  but I don’t know this city well enough

  to picture where you’re sleeping.

  Besides, it’s over now.

  I’m surplus to requirements

  You are with others of your kind

  and I, at last, am absent from your mind.

  There are so many people I should tell

  that you have left me.

  A challenge for another day.

  How warm it is! It has become July.

  I look up as I walk, and in the sky

  I see the first of all the moons

  we will not share.

  Amateur

  The planning of your death

  left a lot to be desired.

  Right in the middle

  of the school vacations.

  Most of your teacher friends

  vaguely imagined you were

  on the mend. Thirty years’ worth

  of children you had taught

  no doubt recalled your kindness,

  your good humour, your inspiration,

  but thought – as grown-up pupils tend to do –

  that you’d vanished from the earth

  after their graduation.

  Now my internet is down