During my recent stay in hospital I picked up a leaflet entitled Poems in the Waiting Room. What a lovely thought, I thought. Some poetry to soothe the troubled breast or whatever part you’re in for. As some of you know I do struggle a bit with poetry but I really don’t mind the odd comforting couplet. And I certainly don’t mind looking for some comforting words while waiting to be operated upon.
I have just come across the leaflet and once more I am intrigued as to the choice of poems therein.
- There is a portion from Pope’s Essay on Man which includes the line: ‘some sunk to beasts, find pleasure end in pain’.
- My Heart’s in the Highlands by Robert Burns
- Hope by Emily Dickinson – Yes I can see why that might be in here.
- The Place where we are right by Yehuda Amichai which includes ‘The place where we are right is hard and trampled like a yard.’
- Lifting Anchor by Stephen Wilson which is about sailing.
- A portion by Shakespeare from Taming of the Shrew – ‘for so your doctors hold it very meet, seeing too much sadness hath congeal’d your blood, and melancholy is the nurse of frenzy…’
- Sometimes with the line ‘Sometimes things don’t go after all, from bad to worse.’ So that’s a comfort then.
- My New Bowl by Sue Burge which is about a bowl of flowers but could be a fruit bowl.
And this is why I don’t understand poetry for clearly I have missed the point of all of these.
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Latter misread as `my new bowel’. Oops…
How apt – or not.
Connal was ‘required’ by his new teacher to write a poem, start of secondary school I think. He had never written a poem before. And it had to be in Scots.
Ma kat rosie is turning deif
She’s gey auld but stell goes on
Nou she canny hear ah thing
Whit a daw lump she is
But stell charms anybody wha comes naur
Wi her saft oosie face
But in the end she’s a slee wee thing
Gets her awn wey and awthing
That’s aboot awthing ye need to ken aboot my KAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I LOVE it! And would much rather have read that!