Poetry in Devon

Hey Tor Wiki Commons

Staying with my parents for a few days, and strode up a very steep hill to admire the view from Hey Tor. In amongst the helpful guidebooks to Devon that dad leaves in the spare room for their frequent visitors I came across a copy of 'One Secret Thing' by Sharon Olds. It begins with some very graphic war poems, fitting in appropriately with our viewing of 'Touched by Auschwitz' this evening, but this one, in contrast, made me smile:

Diagnosis

By the time I was six months old, she knew something

was wrong with me. I got looks on my face

she had not seen on any child

in the family, or the extended family,

or the neighbourhood. My mother took me in

to the pediatrician with the kind hands,

a doctor with a name like a suit size for a wheel:

Hub Long. My mom did not tell him

what she thought in truth, that I was Possessed.

It was just these strange looks on my face - 

he held me up, and conversed with me,

chatting as one does with a baby, and my mother

said, She's doing it now! Look!

She's doing it now! and the doctor said,

What your daughter has

is called a sense

of humor. Ohhh, she said, and took me

back to the house where the sense would be tested

and found to be incurable.