![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
There are times....
Feb. 8th, 2010 12:19 pmAnd 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.
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.
