Lost in the Hospital by Rafael Campo (Lavinia)

Lost in the Hospital

BY RAFAEL CAMPO

It’s not that I don’t like the hospital.

Those small bouquets of flowers, pert and brave.

The smell of antiseptic cleansers.

The ill, so wistful in their rooms, so true.

My friend, the one who’s dying, took me out

To where the patients go to smoke, IV’s

And oxygen in tanks attached to them—

A tiny patio for skeletons. We shared

A cigarette, which was delicious but 

Too brief. I held his hand; it felt

Like someone’s keys. How beautiful it was,

The sunlight pointing down at us, as if

We were important, full of life, unbound.

I wandered for a moment where his ribs

Had made a space for me, and there, beside 

The thundering waterfall of his heart,

I rubbed my eyes and thought, “I’m lost.”

Level: Lower Sec

Themes: Living, Health, Illness, Death, Relationships, Friendship

Stylistic features: Blank verse

Mid-Term Break by Seamus Heaney (Lavinia)

Mid-Term Break

BY SEAMUS HEANEY

I sat all morning in the college sick bay

Counting bells knelling classes to a close.

At two o'clock our neighbours drove me home.

In the porch I met my father crying—

He had always taken funerals in his stride—

And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow.

The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram

When I came in, and I was embarrassed

By old men standing up to shake my hand

And tell me they were 'sorry for my trouble'.

Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest,

Away at school, as my mother held my hand

In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs.

At ten o'clock the ambulance arrived

With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses.

Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops

And candles soothed the bedside; I saw him

For the first time in six weeks. Paler now,

Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple,

He lay in the four-foot box as in his cot.

No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.

A four-foot box, a foot for every year.

Level: Upper Sec

Themes: Living, Death, Loss, Sorrow & Grieving, Relationships, Family & Ancestors

Stylistic Features: Lyric poem, Tercet

hurtling by Stephanie Ye (Lavinia)

hurtling by Stephanie Ye

(the 'L', chicago)

i once saw a weeping man standing

at a window. our eyes met, and

for one fierce moment

i knew we shared a deep connection.

then the 'L' train i was on shot by,

a horizontal shape slicing the vertical,

sundering our budding relationship

decisively.

i still think of him sometimes,

especially on the 'L',

though i've never found his window again.

as if a hole opened

in the gleaming fabric of the city

and swallowed up the window

and the man;

then with a shimmer rippled shut, smoothening

itself out

to become another anonymous glass wall.

people look more beautiful up here,

coiled

in each window

like a portrait in a picture frame.

when i see someone looking, i always

look back. i indulge in these

random acts of intimacy,

because in the next moment

i am gone,

hurtling through the city

in the air.

Level: Lower/Upper Sec

Themes: disconnect, estrangement, alienation, urban life, human connection/relationships, intimacy, transience, global citizenship, cosmopolitanism

Stylistic Devices: Consistent use of the lowercase, free verse, extended metaphor