iron lung
God knows why we went
Wendy Pedley and me
To the Camping and Caravanning Exhibition
At Earl’s Court.
We must have thought that something else was on.
And there we saw it.
The iron lung.
Why? Why was it there?
Displayed as an exciting new invention.
Near scared two girls to death!
A long iron coffin
With a window where the eyes would be.
If you were inside.
If you had to live inside
The iron lung.
Grotesque contraption
Oblong and evil as
Death’s Trojan horse.
A vast Max Ernst steam engine
Of horror.
A lumbering coffin,
A last hope
In the days when polio was fresh.
Alien formidable carriage.
Warhorse trundler.
Tumbrel of a fate far worse than death.
Coarse metal with visor window.
Can you close your eyes
If you cannot breathe?
No choice but to breathe in and to breathe out.
No choice but to see.
*
And I remember another time
With mum and dad
Walking down a street somewhere
When I was small.
A similar contraption passed us by
And I peeped in, on my tiptoes.
And where the face should be
There was a face
Yet not a face -
A dinner plate of vast proportions.
Blank eyed behind the screen
Like a goldfish bowl.
A head like a goldfish bowl
But huge.
And I was too scared
And mum and dad too embarrassed
To ever mention it.
*
There must be so much that is unspoken of.
Childhood horrors accidentally glimpsed
That never fade.
Hiding still, squeezed into the nightmare place
At the back of our skulls.
Yet our humanity should tell us
That there are no monsters.
Only sadness, pain and disappointment.
The time has come
For me to face the horror
Of the iron lung.
Isobel
Tue 17th Aug 2010 16:14
This is horrible Ann and you catch that horror well. I didn't know there were such contraptions back then - a living hell. There is lots of great language in here.'war horse tumblertumbrel of fate' I liked those words - also comparing the face to a dinner plate - sad and white and isolated.
It brings to mind something I witnessed once whilst taking my nephew and niece to a park in London. A young child with warts on its trachea - it had one of those holes in the throat and the nurse had to pump oxygen in at certain intervals. My nephew nearly fainted. She was wearing bright red patent leather shoes. Everywhere we went we kept bumping into the shoes - it was a nightmare. Prior to the incident I had chatted to her. The child was from a rich family but had been abandoned and left to a children's home because of this problem. What some people have to put up with defies belief...