Mental Illness

Quote

Poem

“ At twenty-five I was dumbfounded afresh / By my ignorance of the simplest things.”

‘Fulbright Scholars’

“inside your sob-sodden Kleenex / [...] And the cascade of cries diminuendo”

‘The Shot’

“She could hardly tell us apart in the end”

‘A Picture of Otto’

“You had a fever. You had a real ailment”

‘Fever’

“You cried for America and its medicine cupboard”

‘Fever’

“‘Help me,’ you whispered, ‘help me.’”

‘Fever’

“You dreamed you were clambering / Into the well-hatch [...] you wanted / To clamber into the well-hatch”

‘Fever’

“To find oblivion from your burning tangle / And the foreign bug”

‘Fever’

“Your cry jammed so hard / Over into the red of catastrophe”

‘Fever’

“Stop crying wolf”

‘Fever’

“Horrible things had happened – / Had already happened, was going on / Still happening, with the whole world / Too late to help”

‘Fever’

“It meant your Daddy had come up out of the well”

‘The Bee God’

“You trembled with the new life of those engines”

‘The Blue Flannel Suit’

“the unhealable face-wound / Which was all you had for courage”

‘The Blue Flannel Suit’

“your blue flannel suit, its straitjacket, ugly /

Half-approximation to your idea / Of the properties you hoped to ease into”

‘The Blue Flannel Suit’

“terrors that killed you once already”

‘The Blue Flannel Suit’

“Spain was what you tried to wake up from / And could not.”

‘You Hated Spain’

“Red was your colour [...] You revelled in red”

‘Red’

“I felt it raw – like crisp gauze edges Of a stiffening wound. I could touch The open vein in it”

‘Red’

“You hid from the bone-clinic whiteness. / But the jewel you lost was blue”

‘Red’