Совсем, конечно, неприличный пинок через время и пространство в сторону Герни. Мне нравится.
There is a Dreadful Hell Within Me
By Wendy French
There is a dreadful hell within me
Ivor Gurney
or so she thinks as she drives to the unit
escaping the perils of night terrors
and the aftertaste of fear.
But it’s nothing, she continues in her head
as she winds her way round the one way system
and thinks about the old woman dying
who believes her family have abandoned her
when they visit every day after long journeys
and work. It’s nothing, she thinks, compared
to the man with OCD who’s afraid to go out
knowing he’ll contaminate others after
he’s washed his hands fifty times.
Stopped by a red light she measures up the day
until it turns green and she can go. Go?
She ponders the etymology of ‘go’.
Passes Camberwell Green, the Marie Curie field
and turns in at the Maudsley. She nods to patients
who huddle in thin cotton clothes, muttering,
and the day moves on as she tries to understand.
That hell within Gurney exists here
in the very walls, the interactions, the staff,
the patients, the distant notes from the piano, repeated
over the years, and the ones he once composed.
The singing from the chapel choir.
And all those years back all he wanted was freedom
to walk the hills of Gloucestershire,
madness let loose from the old brick walls.