Grace

There are moving poems that touch the heart of readers. “A Portable Paradise” by British poet Roger Robinson is full of those poems. Among them, “Grace,” which is a poem dedicated to a nurse, is truly touching.

“My son had come early, just the 1kg of him, all big head, bulging eyes and blue veins.” The baby had to be in an incubator. The situation was hopeless, according to the doctor on morning rounds. The consultant told the parents that he is not sure if the baby will live, and the baby “might never leave the hospital” if he lives. It meant the baby will either die or be disabled. The poet and his wife went pale. Then, a Jamaican senior nurse pulled them quickly aside and said, “Him have no right to say thatㅡjust raw so.” There was a warmth in her words that retorted the consultant’s cruel words. She pulled the baby’s incubator into her room on her night shift.

The baby was not the only one the Jamaican nurse took great care of. She was also kind to other baby who will soon die. Another consultant told nurses to stop feeding the dying baby but the senior nurse commanded her nurses to feed him well. “No baby must dead wid a hungry belly,” she said. She would “sit in the dark, rocking that well-fed baby, held to her bosom, slowly humming the melody of “Happy” by Pharrell. To her, life was something that should be respected until the last moment. She was merciful like the meaning of her name Grace.

The poet’s baby survived thanks to the help of nurses. The nurses, who were mostly immigrants, had the spirit of caring doctors lost a long time ago. The only thing doctors were interested in was prescriptions and the progress of a disease. The problem is not unique to that country.


tjdrud0306@donga.com