This poem is taken from PN Review 147, Volume 29 Number 1, September - October 2002.

Cefn Hirgoed

Robert Minhinnick

In the Fever Hospital

I come out of the wood
with my head on fire

And my mother places her nurse's hand upon my brow
and my father sits me down in the rocking chair

And asks, did you see the animals,
did you see the animals?

But all I know is the sunlight
is already turning to ashes in my head

And there is a steel reinforcing rod
pushing through the hollow of my spine

And I cannot speak
so they put me in a room behind a glass wall

Where I sleep and cry out
because there is the weasel

With his magician's white gloves
and there the viper

And out in the fields the cars are arriving,
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