johnny9fingers: (Default)
johnny9fingers ([personal profile] johnny9fingers) wrote2010-02-08 12:19 pm
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There are times....

And just to prove it ain't just the Nazis who....um ....gained intellectual profit from murder:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/feb/07/british-obstetrics-founders-murders-claim

Sometimes it seems there is no advantage without evil to someone somewhere. To quote the poet: "This is the time of day which is worse than night."

Oh fuck it; here it is in its entirety.

Five O'Clock Shadow.

This is the time of day when we in the Men's ward
Think "one more surge of the pain and I give up the fight."
When he who struggles for breath can struggle less strongly:
This is the time of day which is worse than night.

A haze of thunder hangs on the hospital rose-beds,
A doctors' foursome out of the links is played,
Safe in her sitting-room Sister is putting her feet up:
This is the time of day when we feel betrayed.

Below the windows, loads of loving relations
Rev in the car park, changing gear at the bend,
Making for home and a nice big tea and the telly:
"Well, we've done what we can. It can't be long till the end."

This is the time of day when the weight of bedclothes
Is harder to bear than a sharp incision of steel.
The endless anonymous croak of a cheap transistor
Intensifies the lonely terror I feel.


Given the poem's, um, bleakness, one might be surprised that it's by John Betjeman....but the 'Rev in the car park' really gives the game away when you think about it. Tumpity tumpity tumpity tah, or duh DAH duh DAH duh DADA duh DAH, were never really the rhythms of despair: but they seem somehow less comforting after reading this.

[identity profile] vlion.livejournal.com 2010-02-08 03:51 pm (UTC)(link)
Staggering, if true.

[identity profile] winterlion.livejournal.com 2010-02-08 06:11 pm (UTC)(link)
intellectual gain from murder.... happened a lot I suspect.
from what little I've read and seen though, the Nazis were a whole pile less rational... and far more murderous.

still - these kind of things are horrors. I wouldn't be shocked if the real culprit behind Jack the Ripper wasn't someone similar.

I'm split about reposting so I'll just think about it for now...

[identity profile] kdotdammit.livejournal.com 2010-02-11 06:29 pm (UTC)(link)
I meant to tell you how much I love this poem and to thank you for posting it.

[identity profile] johnny9fingers.livejournal.com 2010-02-11 07:20 pm (UTC)(link)
Thanks. It's the best of Betjeman, I reckon.

Your postings of late have been extraordinary. The one about the pimp, the bling, and the older women with the disabled son was a slice of life I have never seen portrayed so....viscerally. The fact you were very young at the time doesn't detract from either your observation or your writing.

Your servant, Ma'am.

(Hope the nose gets better soon.)