Shen, aka Stanley Sim, is an Adelaide GP. His poems arrive direct from the compassionate doctor’s heart. He has won numerous awards and published and performed widely. His book is ‘City of My Skin’ (Five Islands Press 2001).

Shen largely uses free verse. The technique varies from poet to poet, each struggling to ‘find their voice’. Creating good free verse is more difficult than it at first appears. A good writer gives the impression of effortlessness, just as a good athlete does. The effort that goes into the work is hidden neatly behind a smooth façade, whilst a lesser poet will show the strain. The fourth poem here, ‘Certifying the Dead’, is not his most perfect, but it records an experience many doctors have had. Non-doctors often find these poems profoundly moving.

Two men 

Two men sit quietly in a room

between a dying woman.

Both men know that she’s dying

because one has slept by her side

for twenty-seven years and he’s never

seen her sleep so soundly. The other

man has turned her file to the page where

her usual doctor has written

FOR PALLIATION ONLY, and doesn’t feel

he needs to read much more. Two men

sit on either side of a bed in which one person

is dying, and one of them asks if the other

needs anything. “I’m OK”, is the only reply

that’s given. But as if shaken out of a stupor,

the object of this concern asks

the other if the cancer that’s killing his wife is

“one of those silent ones”. The correct answer

to his question is “Yes”, but saying this

won’t make this pain bearable

and won’t make more space in a bed already

crowded by a frail woman sleeping beside

the life that’s gone before her.

So before a reply is offered

the morphine pump buzzes mechanically

in the artificial space between

this conversation and empties the only

easy answer into an unseen vein.

                                           

Indigo stains 

“Both Bicetre and Salpetriere came increasingly to house the insane  and…both retrospectively were known as scenes of horror…..”

(from A History of Psychiatry – Edward Shorter)

 

 

The midnight noise of unwanted voices

just debris crowding their slumber,

spilling beyond the confines of dreams.

For those who have lived in these places

the asylum will always be hidden unease,

buried under mortar and brick.

The years make suffering strangely removed.

Clinical methods listed in old records

are disembodied though they sit alongside names ;

how in one they extracted madness

via the teeth, in another excised evil spirits from the womb

or lashed some with leather and metal.

The prescriptions of an inexact science

have become curios – as quaint as collecting remnants

of a dried-up seed or a folded butterfly.

The drive to cure pushed hands

through the curtain separating

flesh from mind and yet insanity stayed elusive –

a cunning animal which wounded

and then left only traces ;

ghostly wisps of blue ink on fingers

after case notes were closed.

 

                                               

 

Wounds

 

He sounds like

a normal enough bloke,

and she’s a sensible girl,

I wonder how it all came to this

as the needle leads

the thread through the hole

his wedding ring has made,

just above her eyebrow.

She sits there absolutely still,

hasn’t said much

since she came in, though

the two kids, playing catch

in the cubicle, make enough noise

for all of us. The bruises

express themselves simply

on her otherwise blank face as I probe,

dabbing only once in a while

to stop blood running down

onto the sheets.

”We’re almost there”,

I tell her, but she twitches

and winces, starts to pull away.

I tighten my grip on her shoulder,

hoping it doesn’t hurt her too much,

carefully catch the last

bit of thread that’s all that holds this

gaping wound together.

 

 

 

Certifying the dead

 

The dead are always laid out

in quiet rooms, a silence

disrupted only by the twitching

of the second hand of a wall clock.

 

With their eyes closed

it is easy to imagine them sleeping,

or resting between meals.

But when their eyes are opened,

there’s no glow, only the dull

reflection of the torch, as if

shone in a painted glass eye.

 

Prickly cold skin,

all wrinkles and calluses,

no longer invites the warmth

of a handshake, and mouths

are tombs for stilled tongues,

never to utter another greeting.

 

Their lungs draw no air, but

sometimes, I am still startled to hear

the beating of a heart

when the stethoscope is pressed

to their pallid chests.

But I realise that it’s only

the rushing of my own blood in my ears

as soon as I place a hand

over my left breast and feel

what beats there apparently beating

in perfect unison

with a dead man’s heart.