What this blog is and how to use it

This blog contains poems that have caught my attention over the years. Many of the poems I've discussed and explored with 16 -19 year old students in my capacity as lecturer in English.

Browse the list of poems by scrolling down the page or read the titles of poems or names of poets in the sidebar 'Poem Titles and Poets'. Then click on the title or poet.

Friday 3 April 2020

Grace by Roger Robinson


Grace by Roger Robinson

That year we danced to green bleeps on screen.
My son had come early, just the 1kg of him,
all big head, bulging eyes and blue veins.

On the ward I met Grace. A Jamaican senior nurse
who sang pop songs on her shift, like they were hymns.
“Your son feisty. Y’see him just ah pull off the breathing mask.”

People spoke of her in half tones down these carbolic halls.
Even the doctors gave way to her, when it comes
to putting a line into my son’s nylon thread of a vein.

She’d warn junior doctors with trembling hands: “Me only letting you try twice.”
On the night shift she pulls my son’s incubator into her room,
no matter the tangled confusion of wires and machine.

When the consultant told my wife and I on morning rounds
that he’s not sure my son will live, and if he lives he may never leave the hospital,
She pulled us quickly aside: “Him have no right to say that – just raw so.”

Another consultant tell the nurses to stop feeding a baby, who will soon die,
and she commands her loyal nurses to feed him. “No baby must dead wid a hungry belly.” And she’d sit in the dark rocking that well fed baby,

held to her bosom, slowly humming the melody of “Happy” by Pharrell.
And I think by some chance, I’m not here and my son’s life should flicker,
then Grace, she should be the one.

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