Wellcome

My plans exist in my mind like a jigsaw puzzle
… and gradually I shall be able to piece it together(Sir Henry Wellcome, 1853-1936)

As though a neolithic arrowhead he’d unearthed
at the age of four had entered his bloodstream,
its sliver of flint sparking an obsession, the items
he acquired over the years ranged from Darwin’s
whalebone walking-stick, Napoleon’s toothbrush
and a pair of Florence Nightingale’s mocassins
to shrunken heads and tons of ancient armour.

But despite all his squirrelling, the museum
to house them remained illusory. Picture him,
his explorer’s garb and trappings laid aside,
increasingly hemmed in, until overwhelmed
by the mouldering mountain, moth-eaten,
worm-ridden, filling his Willesden warehouse
to overflowing, he ended up part haunted,

part devoured by more than enough to fill five
Louvres but not some insatiable chasm within.
Garlanded and afforded the scholastic kudos
he craved, a vast fortune securely amassed,
did he at the last find respite from cupidity
or in a lonely hall of mirrors cower from those
behemoths hemming him in, their foetid breath?