One more from this volume.
I'd like to read you a poem.
My eldest brother happens to be a doctor.
And a long time ago when he came back
from assisting Lambert Rogers, a famous brain surgeon,
in Cardiff Royal Infirmary, he told us what I think to be--
he told us at home what I think would be a remarkable story,
a haunting story.
And a few years ago, I put it down in this poem
as he told it to me.
For a long time, since the First World War
until fairly recently, brain operations
were done under a local so the patient was conscious.
And when this operation, which was done,
and in fact, just before the war,
they didn't have the investigatory techniques
that they now have.
They didn't have scanning devices,
so they couldn't, for example, pinpoint a tumor
exactly in the brain as they can now.
So sometimes then, unfortunately,
more brain tissue is broken down than
was truly desirable, as the surgeon felt the resistance
in the human.
I called the poem "In The Theatre."
There's a reference to sister, which is--
it doesn't mean she's a nun.
But in England, it's just a certain level
in the nursing hierarchy.
Sister saying, "Soon you will be back in the ward,"
sister thinking, "Only two more on the list," the patient
saying, "Thank you, I feel;" small voices, small lies,
nothing untoward, though, soon, he
would blink again and again because of the fingers
of Lambert Rogers, rash as a blind man
inside his soft brain.
If items of horror can make a man laugh, then laugh at this--
one hour later, the growth still undiscovered,
ticking its own wild time; more brain
mashed because of the probe's braille path; Lambert Rogers
desperate, fingering still; his dresser thinking, "Christ!
Two more on the list, a cisternal puncture,
a neural cyst."
Then, suddenly, the cracked record
in the brain, a ventriloquist voice
that cried, "You sod, leave my soul alone,
leave my soul alone."
The patient dummy lips moving to that refrain,
the patient's eyes too wide.
And, shocked, Lambert Rogers drawing out
the probe with nurses, students, sister, petrified.
"Leave my soul alone, leave my soul alone,"
that voice so artic and that cry so odd had nowhere else to go--
till the empty gramophone wound down
and the words began to blur and slow, "leave my soul alone"
to cease at last when something other died.
And silence matched the silence under snow.
[AUDIENCE CLAPPING]