Poem of the day.

More Clive James. As the Guardian is losing money by the week, rescuing things from its web server becomes a public service.

James refers to the (copyright) Mini Mental Status Examination or the (freely available) Montreal Objective Cognitive assessment. The other option is subtracting 7 from a 100, 7 from that result (which should be 93) and continuing to do that.

Lock Me Away

In the NHS psychiatric test
For classifying the mentally ill
You have to spell ‘world’ backwards.
Since I heard this, I can’t stop doing it.
The first time I tried pronouncing the results
I got a sudden flaring picture
Of Danny La Rue in short pants
With his mouth full of marshmallows.
He was giving his initial and surname
To a new schoolteacher.
Now every time I read the Guardian
I find its columns populated
By a thousand mumbling drag queens.
Why, though, do I never think
Of a French film composer
(Georges Delerue, pupil of
Darius Milhaud, composed the waltz
In Hiroshima, Mon Amour)
Identifying himself to a policeman
After being beaten up?
But can I truly say I never think of it
After I’ve just thought of it?
Maybe I’m going stun:
Dam, dab and dangerous to wonk.
You realise this ward you’ve led me into
Spelled backwards is the cloudy draw
Of the ghost-riders in the sky?
Listen to this palindrome
And tell me that it’s not my ticket out.
Able was I ere I saw Elba.
Do you know who I am, Dr La Rue?

Clive James, 2013