Work Programme

I once worked in a hospital
as part of a programme
to get job-seekers off their bums,
to learn how adults live,
and give a certain something back
that isn't heroin or crack.
 
It was the sort of hospital
that breathes on you a cleanliness,
a latticework of blue
in paint and atmosphere.
Being a proletariat
of NHS peerage,
 
I'd never seen such wholesome glare
from elegant strip-lights, let
alone a cushioned chair
with uncut holstery.
Around a central courtyard wrapped,
the rooms were sterilised and capped
 
with quality befitting life
in thousand-quid-a-day hotels.
A young woman who worked supplies
and took me on a tour
pulled out breasts of gelatin
and scanned them one by one.
 
Imagining a socialite or wag,
awaiting surgery,
I thought how peaceful it must be
when you're wealthy
and ill, or just needing another shot
of youth. It must be heavenly.
 
I’ve always thought of hospitals
as faintly sinister,
places you come to in the dark
because your mother’s been taken
and locked among strangers.
Leaving you to hold her hand
 
in a room “for families”,
the night staff trading homilies
and talking to you in that place
between polite efficiency
and please-don’t-look-too-long-at-me.
Hospitals are madhouses
 
of grinning and intense ennui.
This one, though, was rather neat.
It even had a barbecue
with Eton Mess for pud.
God let me be rich enough
that when I croak, it’s somewhere good.