poem for Tuesday's child: 'P'

 by Domenico di Bartolo

I went to an incredible conference this weekend, Pain and it’s Meanings, which was described on the website as a “unique two-day symposium bringing together some of the liveliest and most widely respected creative and scholarly minds to prod, probe and discuss profound questions about the relationship between body, mind and culture. How and why do we give meaning to bodily pain?”

It was truly fascinating.  For my first MA I wrote about the communication of pain (emotional) between the person in pain and the unaffected person, I also wrote about the impact of inter-generational trauma.  Then two years ago I became a person defined by physical pain, and it is something I live with more or less daily now.  I am back at school, this time studying to become a psychotherapist, so it seems that once again, pain draws me.

On the opening evening, Jo Shapcott read the poem below, which she had been commissioned to write for the conference.  She was inspired by eight words Susan Sontag used to describe pain in her story, Man with a Pain – contract, inheritence, promise, task, gift, ornament, mistake & dream.

As I stood at the back of the auditorium listening to her read I felt tears in my eyes and a profound connection with the words.  It was like having someone speak the whispers that have run through my heart and my head about my own journey in and out of pain.  One stops talking about it, because as a fellow conference attendee said, “it’s boring”.

To those who don’t have pain I imagine it is like a fence on which a sweater catches, around and before the green field of friendly conversation.  It snags the flow of communication. There is no point in speaking of it, especially when what is wanted is a solution, a conclusion.  I have no solution.

Sometimes I’d like to talk about it, it is after all my constant companion and I’d like to bring it to the table, explore it a little.  I don’t want to dwell, frighten, sadden or frustrate, I just want to understand how we live together and what it means to me to be someone who always has one eye turned inward monitoring it’s rise and fall.  But this is difficult.  So Jo Shapcott’s poem talked with me, bore witness, and let me feel the wind blow through windows I’ve been keeping shut.

‘P’

1.  Contract

Please, not the one
a dog would be put down for;

and let it not be the one
which is chronic;

nor the one
which is acute;

let it not be the one
to demand its own journal;

not the one
between seven and ten, or at ninety percent;

not the one
I can point to with my finger;

and, even more, not the one
I can’t point to;

not the one
I am asked to describe as black, or red, or, is it, white;

not the one
with my own button to press, but not too often;

not the one
which is postmodern;

not the one
which is a needle, a hive, an iceberg, a volcano;

not the one
high on heartbeat, skin conductance and EEG;

not the one
which is classic;

not the one
which is earth, which is air, which is fire, which is water;

let it not be the one
where all the words and numbers live;

not the one
with my face.

2. Inheritance

The first body drew
a safe, nerve-coat round itself,
called it p . . . , p . . . , p . . .

3.  Promise

One day, I promised my body
this was IT:  I would stay,
put up with its little aches
and trickles, twitches, gurgles

clicks.  The noisy thing,
it would be clean, well-fed.
I would buff its nails, part
its hair and keep it covered

in public with soft fabrics:
fluffy cottons, velvets, lambswool.
Then my body opened its mouth,
shouted, actually, said things I can’t

say; then, after long silence,
swallowed me whole.
So now I am my body, nothing
less, and this is me, speaking

4.  Task

It isn’t hard,
the job of  breathing.

Ah

It’s not even hard
to speak of  breathing

Ah

and the insects and whirlers
inside and all their

Ah

spiky complicity
in the day to day.

Ah

5.  Gift

You take the red box,
pull ribbons which fall in waves,
and are not grateful.

6.  Ornament

Here is a decoration living inside, let’s say,
the abdomen,
a place already – as surgeons know – crammed with
ochres, reds, creams
and all the beige/browns – but only
darkness
to the tender one who is the body and so
can’t just reach in
to test what might be lost when
the sparkler
is lifted out, too bright for words.

7.  Mistake

Not why, not why, not why, not why, not why –
Why not, why not, why not, why not, why not –
Me

8.  Dream

I have seen a man
in a renaissance fresco
with a gash in his leg
to the bone.
The artist has given
the frilly skin and muscle tears
in the split thigh –  the creamy femur –
his best attention.

The man is looking up, away from his wound,
at the ceiling (ornate),
or at the crowd of  doctors in black hats
who gaze down at him,  envious of  one
who dares to wear on the surface
a beauty more usually tucked inside.

–Jo Shapcott