WEBVTT

00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.800 align:middle line:90%


00:00:00.800 --> 00:00:06.330 align:middle line:84%
This is another poem
with medical undertones.

00:00:06.330 --> 00:00:10.060 align:middle line:90%
It's in two parts.

00:00:10.060 --> 00:00:13.350 align:middle line:84%
The first part is called
Lunch with a Pathologist.

00:00:13.350 --> 00:00:15.530 align:middle line:84%
The second part is
called No Reply.

00:00:15.530 --> 00:00:18.420 align:middle line:90%


00:00:18.420 --> 00:00:21.810 align:middle line:84%
My colleague knows by
heart the morbid verse

00:00:21.810 --> 00:00:25.610 align:middle line:84%
of facts, the dead
weight of a man's liver,

00:00:25.610 --> 00:00:29.340 align:middle line:84%
a woman's lungs,
a baby's kidneys.

00:00:29.340 --> 00:00:32.250 align:middle line:84%
At lunch he recited
unforgettably,

00:00:32.250 --> 00:00:35.460 align:middle line:84%
After death, of all
soft tissues the brain's

00:00:35.460 --> 00:00:40.200 align:middle line:84%
the first to vanish,
the uterus the last.

00:00:40.200 --> 00:00:44.160 align:middle line:84%
Yes, I said, at dawn I've
seen silhouettes hunched

00:00:44.160 --> 00:00:48.090 align:middle line:84%
in a field against the
skyline, each one feasting,

00:00:48.090 --> 00:00:51.530 align:middle line:90%
preoccupied, silent as gas.

00:00:51.530 --> 00:00:54.560 align:middle line:84%
Partial to women they've
stripped women bare

00:00:54.560 --> 00:00:58.400 align:middle line:84%
and left behind only the
taboo food, the uterus,

00:00:58.400 --> 00:01:01.320 align:middle line:90%
inside the skeleton.

00:01:01.320 --> 00:01:04.319 align:middle line:84%
My colleague wiped his
mouth with a napkin,

00:01:04.319 --> 00:01:08.580 align:middle line:84%
hummed, picked shredded
meat from his canines, said,

00:01:08.580 --> 00:01:12.150 align:middle line:90%
you're a peculiar fellow, Abse.

00:01:12.150 --> 00:01:13.530 align:middle line:90%
Why?

00:01:13.530 --> 00:01:16.740 align:middle line:84%
Because when I went
home, no one was home

00:01:16.740 --> 00:01:22.560 align:middle line:84%
because I knew I was awake, a
man asleep is a man enslaved.

00:01:22.560 --> 00:01:25.230 align:middle line:84%
I stood up, walked
into the hall where

00:01:25.230 --> 00:01:30.360 align:middle line:84%
I dialed the number because
of some strange ancestor,

00:01:30.360 --> 00:01:34.080 align:middle line:84%
because I'm Welsh,
because I'm a Jew,

00:01:34.080 --> 00:01:37.290 align:middle line:84%
because of the audible clock's
rounder than any circle

00:01:37.290 --> 00:01:42.510 align:middle line:84%
I can draw, because I've shared
the particular lunatic boredom

00:01:42.510 --> 00:01:46.650 align:middle line:84%
of caged animals, because
I've been touched on a scar

00:01:46.650 --> 00:01:49.950 align:middle line:84%
and felt nothing
or almost nothing,

00:01:49.950 --> 00:01:54.360 align:middle line:84%
because when sick I'm still a
doctor, because pathologists

00:01:54.360 --> 00:01:57.090 align:middle line:84%
aver, The first
organ to disappear

00:01:57.090 --> 00:02:00.180 align:middle line:84%
is the brain, the
uterus the last,

00:02:00.180 --> 00:02:02.580 align:middle line:84%
because I shan't
forget that ever,

00:02:02.580 --> 00:02:04.290 align:middle line:84%
because I walked
into the hall where

00:02:04.290 --> 00:02:09.500 align:middle line:84%
I stood next to the telephone I
thought of a number doubled it.

00:02:09.500 --> 00:02:10.000 align:middle line:90%