Hostname: page-component-7b7567c8c-7pwfn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-11-14T08:09:42.864Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Mrs Noone

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Rowena Warwick
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

An abstract is not available for this content. As you have access to this content, full HTML content is provided on this page. A PDF of this content is also available in through the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

Information

Type
Editorials
Information
The British Journal of Psychiatry , Volume 208 , Issue 5 , May 2016, pp. 411
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 2016 

she is all talk,
layers of cigarette smoke, her filthy coat,
her thick Irish accent, muffle her words.
I tune in. It hurts, she says, I hurt.
I … her stream of noise goes on and on like an echo.
She says I might as well be dead.
I'm on my own now, everyone else is dead,
the carer comes, skips the evenings, won't talk,
it's always the same, every day an echo
of the last. I say, first, let's get you out of that coat.
I think of the patients waiting, I don't want her to feel hurt,
I must listen, not hurry, I must let her have her words.
All we have in this room are words
to get her on to the couch so we can help her, deaden
the pain, her knees, her hips, the places that hurt,
but Mrs. Noone beats us back with her talk
of Ireland, the old days. She hangs on to her stinking coat
holds it to herself like armour, giving us only its echo.
I know, in my own life, there is no space for any echo,
colleagues, husband, home, I am surrounded by words.
So I coax her, attempt to liberate her coat,
my fingers sink into the moth-eaten fur, its deadness
lingers. Her frown deepens but her talk
continues. That last doctor … like razors … hurt.
She looks at me. Is that needle going to hurt?
Her eyes with their sagging lower lids have an echo
behind them, which says more than all her talk.
I'll do my best I say, but my words
seem inadequate to comfort this woman with her long-dead
husband, her handbag of treasures and her pernicious coat.
If only we could get her to lie down, lose the coat.
The clock creeps on but we are halted, each wasted minute hurts,
the assistant and I share a glance, swallow up the dead
time. She won't move, this garrulous, pungent, echo
of a woman, though she must know that our words
and our time are metered, despite all our talk.
Then the coat gives way, her mouth slackens, all echoes
end as her body is revealed, in all its hurt. Her words
stop. The air between us is dead, without talk.

From The Hippocrates Prize 2015: The Winning and Commended Poems, selected by T Dalrymple, R Gross, F Oyebode and S Rae, eds MW Hulse & DRJ Singer. The Hippocrates Press, 2015. © Rowena Warwick. Reprinted with permission.

This journal is not currently accepting new eletters.

eLetters

No eLetters have been published for this article.