Ivan Head: Brain Scan for Mr Head

Brain Scan for Mr Head

The day Keith Douglas’s poems arrived

I was sent for the MRI

That would scan my head,

But not as poets scan their feet.

I just had time to read “Bête Noire”

And think Keith (in the last year of his short life)

War-possessed, or traumatised

In need of Long-Leave rest.

I slipped both volumes into my jacket pockets.

At once like strange six-guns they seemed,

And I “The Kid” about to shoot it out

With cancer of the brain, and win—

Lightning on the draw in childhood games.

Here in the magnetic resonances of the lab,

What strange staccato sounds they batter

Through your skull, hoping

That the pic of where you think, will be null.

I wonder if this is white-noise?

Pre-verbal sound essential to the task—

A functional snow job?

A white-out between big magnets.

At the ten minute mark

I thought I could detect a jokester

Saying shutupshutupshutup

Faster than I could articulate

Lying here inside this more friendly metal beast.

Douglas in his tank turned men to ghosts.

Why is there no Eric Satie or Vaughan Williams?

Or for the slightly younger tumours, Hendrix or Santana?

Perhaps the patient could press Select,

Drop a 45 into JUKE BOX MRI?

Later, the Receptionist hands

The Envelope of printed Scans—no Billet Doux.

I note its sticky label reads “MR Head MRI Brain”.

Ivan Head