A houseman walks in the treacle of night,
Weary, uncertain, and spent.
The white coat weighs heavy, a mantle of sorts,
Through corridors hushed in the deep of the night.
With the ward-weary tread that the darkness exhorts,
He carries the tools that provide him his light:
The stethoscope’s coil and the dog-eared guide,
The ink of a pen, the tools of his trade.
Twenty hours of service are etched in his stride,
With twelve more to go ‘ere the shadows will fade.
Through a wrinkle in time, the long hallway slows,
A stillness that lingers, a pause in the beat.
A quiet diastole — the spirit’s repose —
To steady the rhythm of mile-burdened feet.
In this silvered silence, the emptiness heals,
A hollow for breathing, a peace for the mind,
Refilling the vessel before the bell peals
To leave the soft hush of the hallway behind.
The ward door waits, a heavy, fireproof seal,
Between the silvered silence and the shriek;
Beyond it lies the crisis and the real,
Where questions wait, and answers are to seek.
He stands a moment, hand upon the plate,
The corridor has stilled the inner storm;
He sheds the man outside the heavy gate,
And lets the doctor’s mask begin to form:
Unhurried, capable, and sure.
He draws a breath — And pushes open the door.
MJM
The Land of Lost Content (1984)
Into my heart an air that kills
From that lost country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?
A different walk in years long past,
When “this year’s prince was born,”
And questions in the press were cast:
“Wish you were better informed?”
The blast at Brighton, Orgreave’s fight,
Greenham’s wire, Band-Aid song;
A world of shadow in the light,
Where once we did belong.
That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The sunlit highways where I went
And cannot come again.
With apologies to A. E. Houseman for butchering his verse
