The poem
Seven o'clock. The seventh day of the seventh month of the year. No sooner have I got myself up in lime-green scrubs, a sterile cap and mask, and taken my place at the head of the table
than the windlass-woman ply their shears and gralloch-grub for a footling foot, then, warming to their task, haul into the inestimable
realm of apple-blossoms and chanterelles and damsons and eel-spears and foxes and the general hubbub of inkies and jennets and Kickapoos with their lemniscs or peekaboo-quiffs of Russian sable
and tallow-unctuous vernix, into the realm of the widgeon— the 'whew' or 'yellow-poll', not the 'zuizin'—
Dorothy Aoife Korelitz Muldoon: I watch through floods of tears as they give her a quick rub-a-dub and whisk her off to the nursery, then check their staple-guns for staples