Sport 21: Spring 1998
Be Well, Be Humble
Be Well, Be Humble
She writes: in the dream I am the victim
of a car crash or a domestic dispute,
you decide. I'm lying white in a white
bed in a white ward with little black
stitches like staples hitching ten red
slashes on my arms and my face,
when suddenly the stitches twitch, arch
and flick out. It's anacondas and
tarantulas. Scream.
‘Be well,
be humble,’ says the whiskey priest
in a courtly fax on gilt-edged Papal paper,
‘even as a tumble of runner beans on a compost
heap is humble. Anything other is vice.
How lovely to hear your new voice.’