Hospital Music

In the square at St Bartholomew’s hospital,
Crates of flowers are stacked for bedding out
Round the plane trees. Patients with paper cups sit about
In wheelchairs or under the shelters. Above, in the hall,
An orchestra is rehearsing: a Mozart piano concerto,
The Bach double, some Handel — clearly audible outside
Through the fountain’s splash, as if filling a tide
Or a sound the wind makes. Nobody seems to know
It is there. A youth with a reconstructed face
Glares at a girl, grey-lidded, lip-white, drip-fed
Who stares at a scabbed tree permanently disfigured,
While nurses, a doctor, go by at a determined pace.
Either the sound is of all things the most natural
Or there is no connction of any kind, none at all.