It’s just over two years since I had a major operation so it seems appropriate to look again at this poem by Robert Graves. It concerns a subject that doesn’t get written about very often. I’m not sure when it was written, but I think it refers to an operation later in Graves’ life, rather than any of his experiences in the first world war.
I think it is a remarkable poem, but I must admit I have to supress a wry smile. As so often with Graves, there’s just the merest hint of a boast in his telling us that he was able to resist asking for morphine. I have to admit that I gave in and pressed the green button on the pump as often as it would let me.
Surgical Ward: Men by Robert Graves
Something occurred after the operation
To scare the surgeons (though no fault of theirs),
Whose reassurance did not fool me long.
Beyond the shy, concerned faces of nurses
A single white-hot eye, focusing on me,
Forced sweat in rivers down from scalp to belly.
I whistled, gasped or sang, with blanching knuckles
Clutched at my bed-grip almost till it cracked:
Too proud, still, to let loose Bedlamite screeches
And bring the charge-nurse scuttling down the aisle
With morphia-needle levelled…
Lady Morphia—
Her scorpion kiss and dark gyrating dreams—
She in mistrust of whom I dared out-dare,
Two minutes longer than seemed possible,
Pain, that unpurposed, matchless elemental
Stronger than fear or grief, stranger than love.
The Good Reader 