they gave me a ball on a length of skipping-rope

and I played the part of a swingball post

on a summer lawn for a circle of friends.

After the pins and needles in my right leg

they grafted a shooting stick onto the stump.

When septicaemia took the other peg

I thanked the mysterious ways of the Lord

for the gift of sight and my vocal cords.

With the brush in my teeth, I painted Christmas cards.

When I went blind, they threaded light-bulbs

into the sockets, and slotted a mouth-organ

into the groove of the throat when cancer struck.

For ears, they kitted me out with a baby’s sock

for one, and a turned-out pocket, sellotaped on.

Last autumn I managed the Lyke Wake Walk,

forty-odd miles in twenty-four hours—oh Ma,

treasure this badge that belongs to your son

with his nerves of steel and his iron will.

This Easter I’m taking the Life-saving Test—oh Pa,

twenty-five lengths of the baths towing a dead weight,

picture your son in his goggles and vest, with a heart

like a water-pump under a battleship chest.

FOR THE RECORD

Ever since the very brutal extraction

of all four of my wisdom teeth,

I’ve found myself talking

with another man’s mouth, so to speak,

and my tongue has become a mollusc

such as an oyster or clam,

broken and entered, licking

its wounds in its shell.

I was tricked into sleep by a man with a smile,

who slipped me the dose

like a great-uncle slipping his favourite nephew

a ten-pound note, like

so, back-handed, then tipped me a wink.

I was out with the stars,

and woke up later, crying,

and wanting to hold the hand of the nurse.

Prior to that, my only experience

under the knife was when I was five,

when my tonsils were hanging

like two bats at the back of a cave

and had to be snipped. But that

was a piece of piss compared with this,

which involved, amongst other things,

three grown men, a monkey-wrench

and the dislocation of my jaw. I wonder,

is this a case of excessive force,

like the powers-that-be evicting

a family of four, dragging them

kicking and screaming, clinging to furniture,

out through their own front door?

Like drawing all four corners of the earth

through the Arc de Triomphe.

You might think that with all the advances

in medical science

teeth like these could be taken out

through the ears or the anus,

or be shattered like kidney stones

by lasers from a safe distance.

But it seems that the art

hasn’t staggered too far since the days

when a dentist might set up his stall

at a country fair

or travelling circus.

I’m also reminded of John Henry Small

of Devizes, who put his fist in his mouth

but couldn’t spit it out,

and the hand was removed, forthwith,

along with his canines and incisors.

Returning to myself, the consultant says

I should wait another week at least