The poem
I was making my way home late one night this summer, when I staggered into a snow drift.
Her eyes spoke of a sloe-year, her mouth a year of haws.
Was she Aurora, or the goddess Flora, Artemidora, or Venus bright, or Anorexia, who left a lemon stain on my flannel sheet?
It's all much of a muchness.
In Belfast's Royal Victoria Hospital a kidney machine supports the latest hunger-striker to have called off his fast, a saline drip into his bag of brine.
A lick and a promise. Cuckoo spittle. I hand my sample to Doctor Maw. She gives me back a confident All Clear.