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- MICHAEL SHARKEY
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Disabled
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- The very sight makes voyeurs of us all.
- What is it like to live with that?
- We’ll never know unless don’t
say it,
- and we’d like to change the subject,
but we can’t.
-
- What is it like? We’d like to look
away but don’t
- we’re not here long, enough to show
of course
- compassion that we’ve practised and
we do feel how
- it must be and half listen to the answer
-
- if our friend can speak at all. We’d
like to know
- how does it feel and where and how and
when
- did you first were you born with and are
some days
- worse than others then what happens.
-
- What’s it like to live with answers
- every minute of the day, sometimes an
hour
- every second, take for instance well
- that’s that then when the penny
drops
-
- before the doctor’s little chat has
ended,
- can’t get better, could be worse.
No, will
- get worse. There’ll be of course
adjustments
- but the news is not all bad life will
-
- go on the day’s still fine, the
trains are
- running no one’s dying that
you’d notice. But
- there’ll have to be some changes.
Like
- the looks that parents, partners,
children give us
-
- and the silences until we turn to
furniture
- again when you’re all right here by
yourself then
- sweet, no problem, we’ll be off.
Thank you
- for calling. And the books will lose
their savour,
-
- the remote control will fall down out of
reach,
- or batteries fail, the thing we hoped
would not
- occur has just occurred, and that in
public,
- and it’s all right I’ll just
sit a little while.
-
- But that ‘It’s all right’
isn’t right.
- There’s something queer about the
language.
- Words don’t mean what they should do
they
- everything goes at an angle to the
question.
-
- What’s it like? No need for like
then. Who could
- like? And what is like? A bird’s a
cardinal,
- a treatment is a treatment’s not a
treatment.
- But it could be. In a word, there’s
nothing in it,
-
- pain of others is remote as if an image
in a mirror
- could have feelings, while compassion
shadows
- patience and that train will soon arrive,
the day’s
- still fine and we’ll be off then.
It’s no problem.
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