|
 James Falconer Kirkup - 'Compassion' sculpture - Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Edgbaston, Birmingham, U.K. Posted by:  Mike_bjm
N 52° 27.079 W 001° 56.441
30U E 571988 N 5811764
A quote from 'A Correct Compassion' a poem by James Falconer Kirkup is inscribed on the stone plinth of the 'Compassion' sculpture.
Waymark Code: WM120P3
Location: West Midlands, United Kingdom
Date Posted: 01/25/2020
Views: 4
A quote from 'A Correct Compassion' a poem by James Falconer Kirkup is inscribed on the stone plinth of the 'Compassion' sculpture which is alongside a footpath between the Queen Elizabeth Hospital and the University of Birmingham. The quoted is as follows:
‘WITH PROPER GRACE
INFORMING A CORRECT COMPASSION, THAT PERFORMS
ITS LOVE, AND MAKES IT LIVE.’The quote is from the end of the poem. The full poem is shown below:
'Cleanly, sir, you went to the core of the matter.
Using the purest kind of wit, a balance of belief and art,
You with a curious nervous elegance laid bare
The root of life, and put your finger on its beating heart.
The glistening theatre swarms with eyes, and hands, and eyes.
On green-clothed tables, ranks of instruments transmit a sterile gleam.
The masks are on, and no unnecessary smile betrays
A certain tension, true concomitant of calm.
Here we communicate by looks,though words,
Too, are used, as in continuous historical present
You describe our observations and your deeds.
All gesture is reduced to its result, an instrument.
She who does not know she is a patient lies
Within a tent of green, and sleeps without a sound
Beneath the lamps, and the reflectors that devise
Illuminations probing the profoundest wound.
A calligraphic master, improvising, you invent
The first incision, and no poet's hesitation
Before his snow-blank page mars your intent.
The flowing stroke is drawn like an uncalculated inspiration.
A garland of flowers unfurls across the painted flesh.
With quick precision the arterial forceps click.
Yellow threads are knotted with a simple flourish
Transfused, the blood preserves its rose, though it is sick.
Meters record the blood, measure heart-beats, control the breath.
Hieratic gesture: scalpel bares a creamy rib; with pincer knives
The bone quietly is clipped, and lifted out. Beneath,
The pink, black-mottled lung like a revolted creature heaves,
Collapses: as if by extra fingers is neatly held aside
By two ordinary egg-beaters, kitchen tools that curve
Like extraordinary hands. Heart, laid bare, silently beats. It can hide
No longer, yet is not revealed. – 'A local anaesthetic in the cardiac nerve.'
Now, in firm hands that quiver with a careful strength,
The knife feels through the heart's transparent skin;at first,
Inside the pericardium, slit down half its length,
The heart, black-veined, swells like a fruit about to burst,
But goes on beating, love's poignant image bleeding at the dart
Of a more grevious passion, as a bird, dreaming of flight, sleeps on
Within its leafy cage – 'It generally upsets the heart
A bit, though not unduly, when I make the first injection.'
Still, still the patient sleeps, and still the speaking heart is dumb.
The watchers breathe an air far sweeter, rarer than the room's.
The cold walls listen. Each in his own blood hears the drum
She hears, tented in green, unfathomable calm.
'I make a purse-string suture here, with a reserve
Suture, which I must make first, and deeper,
As a safeguard, should the other burst. In the cardiac nerve
I inject again a local anaesthetic. Could we have fresh towels to cover
All these adventitious ones. Now can you all see?
When I put my finger inside the valve, there may be a lot
Of blood,and it may come with quite a bang. But I let it flow,
In case there are any clots, to give the heart a good clean-out.
Now can you give me every bit of light you've got'.
We stand on the benches, peering over his shoulder.
The lamp's intensest rays are concentrated on an inmost heart.
Someone coughs. – 'If you have to cough, you will do it outside this theatre.'
'– Yes, sir.' 'How's she breathing, Doug.? Do you feel quite happy?'
–'Yes fairly Happy.' – 'Now. I am putting my finger in the opening
of the valve. I can only get the tip of my finger in. – It's gradually
Giving way. – I'm inside. – No clots. – I can feel the valve
Breathing freely now around my finger, and the heart working.
Not too much blood. it opened bery nicely.
I should say that anatomically speaking
This is a perfect case. – Anatomically.
For, of course, anatomy is not physiology.'
We find we breathe again, and hear the surgeon hum.
Outside, in the street, a car starts up. The heart regularly
Thunders. – 'I do not stitch up the pericardium.
It is not necessary.' For this is imagination's other place,
Where only necessary things are done, with the supreme and grave
Dexterity that ignores technique; with proper grace
Informing a correct compassion, that performs its love, and makes it live.' ( visit link) The poem was dedicated to Mr Philip Allison after the poet watched Mr Allison perform a Mitral Stenosis Valvotomy operation in Leeds General Hospital. The cast bronze sculpture, by Uli Nimptsch, was original located in a garden outside the Selly Hospital out-patients department in Birmingham. It was moved in 2014 to a position alongside a footpath between the Queen Elizabeth Hospital and the University of Birmingham in Edgbaston. The cost of moving the sculpture was covered by the Charles Henry Foyle Trust; the Trust which originally donated the sculpture to the Selly Oak Hospital. The dedication of the sculpture on the supporting plinth is shown below:
‘*COMPASSION*
THIS STATUE WAS COMMISSIONED
AND PRESENTED TO
SELLY OAK HOSPITAL
BY THE
CHARLES HENRY FOYLE TRUST
ON THE SUGGESTION OF
ONE OF THE ORIGINAL TRUSTEES
THE LATE SIR ALBERT BRADBEER
1963’
Address:
Queen Elizabeth Hopsital Birmingham,
Mindelsohn Way,
Birmingham B15 2TH,
United Kingdom
Website: [Web Link]
|
Visit Instructions:
Please include the following with your submission of a visit:
1. Photograph as a proof of your visit.
2. Short narrative. Tell of your visit, share something new, edit the waymark with additional quotes found a the location, add new visiting hours or anything that would be nice to know when visiting the location.
3. Finally, please add a visit if you go to the area and you find the building, memorial, memorial or structure has been removed. Please submit an edit to the waymark adding the words {Historic/Removed} at the end. Also, edit the short description to annotate the reason it was removed for the value to other visitors.
|