Eliot North presents poems from London visit, 27-29 January 2014
Extraordinary writing from Eliot North!
The Evelyn Tables
Dead bodies splayed,
dissect to instruct.
Engrained into knots;
Italian pine.
Spinal cord draped,
melted branches.
Soft varnished hard;
invisible ink.
Arteries glow red,
injected pigment.
Thickly voluptuous;
pulses bound.
Sympathetic starburst,
nervous system.
Innervate our organs;
liver and lung.
Veins hang limply,
cut the strings.
Movement arrested;
no return.
Evelyn’s tables,
curious art.
Seeing wooden eyes;
ancient dead.
Dare Quam Accipere*
The Gordon Museum of Pathology
Walk up to the black door
in Guy’s Hospital, London.
Enter by appointment
read the Latin written there.
Inside lies a chamber,
to which few are invited.
Three floors of human specimens
span four hundred years.
A museum hung and quartered,
opposing segments yellow, blue.
White painted balconies
repeat the hospital crest.
Explore each section slowly,
tread soft on spiral stair.
Lean against wooden rests,
gaze on rows of jars.
Note how the unborn lie
right next to the dead.
Body parts coded, organised,
chaotic disease made good.
Truth preserved in formaldehyde,
real people who gift their lives.
Lessons in anatomy;
Gordon Pathology Museum.
*Better to give than receive
