Allistair Elliot
A Touch of Death
Strange fingers woke me, fumbling at my brow.
My rooms were near a roof. I thought: Somehow
Someone's got in. The cold hand hit my nose.
Naked between the freezing sheets, I froze.
Then ... nothing happened. I became aware
Horribly slowly no one else was there:
Quite dark, but you could sense across the floor
The usual wooden quadrupeds, no more.
Was it a corpse's hand, put in my bed
By my best friend, who's studying the dead?
Surely he'd not do that ... The arm felt grey,
Somehow, and yielding, in a foul soft way.
It didn't smell, though. Feeling worse, and colder,
I ran my left hand up it to the shoulder,
Expecting torn-out strings, a bulb of bone,
And wetness. Worst of all, it was my own -
I'd two right arms: one, warm beneath my head
And pillow, there; and this, cold, slack, and ... dead?
I tried to touch the real one where I knew
It must be, but my fingers went straight through.
All the sensations of my arm lay there
In order, like a well-lit thoroughfare,
But not the arm. My soul is breaking free,
I thought: I'll lose the arm. I might lose me!
I grabbed the dead thing. It was powerless.
I rubbed the muscles, stroked and tried to press
The blood along, like air in a balloon,
But nothing made it feel. It would die soon,
If it weren't dead already. Then I thought:
If I could swing it round, it might get caught
As it goes through its image. Can you fit
Your arm back in the space that matches it?
The elbows fused together as they met,
The wrists and knuckles too - a perfect set.
And even when I moved them on, they stayed
United as they'd been since they were made.
I felt the rushing happiness of a boy
Who's found the key he needs to wind his toy.
I slept then, I suppose. I don't recall.
You'll keep this quiet, won't you? After all,
Who'd ever shake this hand - with which I write -
Knowing it died and met its ghost one night?
A Touch of Death
Strange fingers woke me, fumbling at my brow.
My rooms were near a roof. I thought: Somehow
Someone's got in. The cold hand hit my nose.
Naked between the freezing sheets, I froze.
Then ... nothing happened. I became aware
Horribly slowly no one else was there:
Quite dark, but you could sense across the floor
The usual wooden quadrupeds, no more.
Was it a corpse's hand, put in my bed
By my best friend, who's studying the dead?
Surely he'd not do that ... The arm felt grey,
Somehow, and yielding, in a foul soft way.
It didn't smell, though. Feeling worse, and colder,
I ran my left hand up it to the shoulder,
Expecting torn-out strings, a bulb of bone,
And wetness. Worst of all, it was my own -
I'd two right arms: one, warm beneath my head
And pillow, there; and this, cold, slack, and ... dead?
I tried to touch the real one where I knew
It must be, but my fingers went straight through.
All the sensations of my arm lay there
In order, like a well-lit thoroughfare,
But not the arm. My soul is breaking free,
I thought: I'll lose the arm. I might lose me!
I grabbed the dead thing. It was powerless.
I rubbed the muscles, stroked and tried to press
The blood along, like air in a balloon,
But nothing made it feel. It would die soon,
If it weren't dead already. Then I thought:
If I could swing it round, it might get caught
As it goes through its image. Can you fit
Your arm back in the space that matches it?
The elbows fused together as they met,
The wrists and knuckles too - a perfect set.
And even when I moved them on, they stayed
United as they'd been since they were made.
I felt the rushing happiness of a boy
Who's found the key he needs to wind his toy.
I slept then, I suppose. I don't recall.
You'll keep this quiet, won't you? After all,
Who'd ever shake this hand - with which I write -
Knowing it died and met its ghost one night?
