Suffering General

I had to be in Glasgow today, at the city that has sprung up around the old buildings that used to be called the Southern General Hospital. Now, with the new University of Glasgow building (the tall one with the heli-pad on the roof) and the relocated Sick Children's Hospital, as well as all the confusion of old, shabby blocks (I was visiting one) and futuristic car parks, it is an extraordinary place. It's been given a new name, which eludes me at the moment, but for me it will always bear the name a dear friend gave it long ago, after he'd had a beastly experience there.

The last time I was there, waiting for a friend, I wrote a poem, sitting in the same waiting area I was in today. I called it 'Suffering General' for more than the obvious reason ...

Hospitals no longer have that smell
- the fearful pungency of old - 
no: there is a casual air
about the hours of waiting, where
random chat is fractured
and coffee cups abandoned
as if this were a station – 
a brief halt in life’s affairs
a stop along the line
before the terminus.
Stop: don’t think of terminus,
not here, among the shifting
interrupted lives of those
who miss their names –
impatient calls and repetitions – 
then stumble off to share their need
and leave, calmed for now or not,
out into the grey day where fog
swirls round a half-built tower
and coughing echoes in the biting air.


© C.M.M 11/11

The half-built tower is finished now - and that's it in the photograph.