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to the Archive indexThe following rather sombre offering was largely composed and memorised during eleven and a half hours spent on a hospital trolley at the Leicester Royal Infirmary. I have to admit to feeling more than a little sorry for myself at the time.
It would be nice to take some useful, safety-related message away from the experience, but I think it was simply a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
No warning sound, no warning sight,
of the car that cut in from the right.
Driven by a lady, who,
next birthday will be seventy two.
Joyful engine song cut short
as rider and old mount cavort
in brief, grotesque balletic dance.
She hadn’t given them half a chance.
No more consummate machine/man blend.
Instead, two broken heaps, one steel, for
scrap?
The other flesh, luckily, to mend.
Bill Cockburn 12 July 2000