REASON FOR BEING

This blog came about during the tail end of winter because everybody else was doing it. It was supposed to be a place to record all the better passages from books and print journalism (in common with a lot of people, I read often but then promptly forget everything). So, with this in mind and a new name, here's a poem I found recently. It's brimming with pathos. I loved the 'nerve' metaphor:

Death of an old woman
She lived too much alone to be aware of it,
In a cottage on a stretch of moor,
Built before the distant road was built
And shunned by everything built since.
Her croft had faded through the years
For lack of drainage and proper food,
Bled of its green until the eye
Could hardly tell where it began or ended.
Her house had a hold in the thatch
To let the smoke out - when there was any -
And the rain in, and three small openings
In the salls, two for light and one for charity.
And all about the size she was accustomed to.
The man who found her dead was drawn
In that direction by the movement.
That was the door of her empty henhouse
Flapping in the wind, a nerve continuing to twitch.
She herself was lying in her bed,
Causing a slight ripple in the blankets.
She had an English bible in her hands,
Upside down. The doctor who examined her
Stated that her mouth was full of raw potato.

Alasdair Maclean