Examining The Archive

by Ken Head © 2006

Retrieved from the vault where the frailest books are stored

between visits to the reading room for people like me to use

them, the register lying there on its velvet cushion looks old

and battered enough for the roll-call of sadness I feel certain

it must contain.

Part of me wishes I were still outside enjoying the sunshine

and roses in the small park across the road where people go

on days this warm to eat their lunches. I saw them there as

I arrived, flecked with shadows from the trees, like a jigsaw

puzzle with pieces missing.

Whenever I watch a craftsman handling tools he knows well

and see how easily hand and eye work together to get the job

done properly, I remind myself that it’s the same for me with

books, the tools of my trade, which I try to use as skilfully as

he uses his.

But today, turning the pages gingerly, taking as much care of

the book’s fractured spine as I can while I search out the date

I’m looking for, Wednesday, November 6th 1918, in the sixth

week of the Lady Day Half Year, it isn’t so easy to keep faith

with detachment.

How immaculately accurate they are, these careful, ledgered
entries hand-written with dip pens and colour-coded in blue
or black with interjections of bright red. Twenty-two patients
admitted that day, including seventeen paupers and ten who
had ration books.

Bold red highlights that the hospital took these and attached a
four-digit identification number to the clothing of each patient.
I focus on compassion, there must’ve been compassion, trying
to avoid thinking of numbering the dying. Charlie’s number is
double two zero three.

Acute pneumonia, severe, brief. Predictable after three years
in the trenches, too. But there’s no contact as I run my finger
over the line of last words, although in the playground below
the open window huddles of teenagers are listening to music
loud enough to wake the dead.

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