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Assisi            The dwarf with his hands on backwards      sat, slumped like a half-filled sack      on tiny twisted legs from which      sawdust might run, 5     outside the three tiers of churches built      in honour of St Francis, brother      of the poor, talker with birds, over whom      he had the advantage      of not being dead yet.   10    A priest explained      how clever it was of Giotto      to make his frescoes tell stories      that would reveal to the illiterate the goodness      of God and the suffering 15    of His Son. I understood      the explanation and      the cleverness.        A rush of tourists, clucking contentedly,      fluttered after him as he scattered 20    the grain of the Word. It was they who had passed      the ruined temple outside, whose eyes      wept pus, whose back was higher      than his head, whose lopsided mouth      said Grazie in a voice as swe

Visiting Hour     The hospital smell        combs my nostrils        as they go bobbing along        green and yellow corridors.   5       What seems a corpse        is trundled into a lift and vanishes        heavenward.          I will not feel, I will not        feel, until 10      I have to.          Nurses walk lightly, swiftly,        here and up and down and there,        their slender waists miraculously        carrying their burden 15      of so much pain, so        many deaths, their eyes        still clear after        so many farewells.          Ward 7. She lies 20      in a white cave of forgetfulness.        A withered hand        trembles on its stalk. Eyes move        behind eyelids too heavy        to raise. Into an arm wasted 25      of colour a glass fang is fixed,        not guzzling but giving.        And between her and me        distance shrinks till there i