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					Poetry by Meg Campbell We are very grateful to Meg for allowing us to reprint poems about her experiences in Porirua. Glimpses into Porirua Mental Hospital Dirty old Rauta, and its red carpet and vaulted ceiling, and little white beds, heaps of them, and the strangest people, much given to burping, and striding away with a purpose up the red carpet to the end of the ward, then back again to the huge fire-place. They didn't look ill. On the nurse's belt are some large keys which unlock the thick doors and the giant fire-screen. Rattling keys make this a prison hospital. I know, in a dull way, that we, the totally dispossessed, will not leave this extraordinary place. A little nurse sweeps and rolls up the long red carpet, then mops under the little white beds. She is sole nurse and char-lady. In the bed opposite is a lady with one fierce eye, a stroke having paralysed half her face. She's a retired teacher and talks to me about poetry. I soften a little. Some years later, a young chaplain found his way into the most secure of rooms, and I, affected by the drug Amitriptyline, talked until his ears were burning, and he told all to his superior. I must learn never to trust those who are themselves frightened. Oh, 'God of getting well' , help me! The Matron, Irish and kindly, dresses like a REAL nurse, in white uniform and veil.       "Aline," she says "How are you feeling? You can have your own clothes, today". Who am I? I have no watch, no wedding ring, no pen or paper, no comb or hair fastener, or toothbrush. I am dressed in huge ward bloomers, and worn nightgown. "Do her hair, Nurse. "Aline, settle in and rest." "But the locked ward, and Solitary?" Seclusion, Aline, is for the sick. You hurt a nurse fighting treatment. Your behaviour... ... Nurse, get these women to the day-room. Her veil is a wind-sock blowing her back along the path, Away from Rauta into the labyrinth that is this hospital. Hole in the Head I have sung every song I know this night, my fourth in isolation. By morning I am hoarse, and none hears me but the ladies who kick the door. "You're down for treatment and serves you right ! making a disturbance ! But now they come, nurses who are warders, who are nurses, with hard, frightened hands, I plead and fight and pull my clothes off in a corner. Here is the doctor , nightmare eyes bulging, master of the machine which glides to the bed where I am held, temples bared, teeth clamped on a rubber gag... 'How are you, Arlin?' he says, just as the magistrate did. There is a smell of meths, and then, no air -- no time to breathe .. .. I leave them through a hole drilled by fire in my temples, escaping the explosion that ends all worlds. From ' A Durable Fire' , Te Kotare Press, 1982 What Dreams May Come Morning arrives with a shock and the sleepers stir in the long white ward as the key turns in the lock. My mouth drains dry of dreams. Nurse stretches, lifts knitting from a pool of light into her bag, all meaning speared on those needles. She is leaving. Her ghostly charges surround her, asking for a light for their morning cigarettes. She calls them 'ladies' with a touch of irony, and sighs. And the ghostly ladies sigh and fidget down corridors long as nuns' prayers. In the dining room, bewildered at formica tables amongst tea-cup clatter they watch while bread-and butter knives are counted and handed out. From the window I see a hedge between hospital grounds and cemetery. A fallen jam jar spills its dead gladioli's on a grave. From "A Durable Fire" Te Kotare Press, 1982 Woman in Ward 10 I see you lingering still at the crossroads, poor martyr. You have been so often wrong, you'll never move again with resolution, each blunder bringing a further injection. You are nailed to the bed, crucifix slipping from slackened hand, big stubborn body thickly sleeping. Two days ago, as ill as you, I kissed the ring the Pope had given you and helped deliver your immaculate child into a hospital towel. We hid Him on a pile of linen - Get back on your feet, for God's sake. I prefer you awake and mad with staring eyes, relating stories that are neither truth nor lies, but which serve to pass the day here, at the crossroads, the corridors where we women wait. E.C.T. Awesome the amount of current they pass through one's brain from one temple to the other. So many knock-out blows day after day ... it was, by nature, an experiment of the '50's (earlier pigs had been used) My God, who'd be a pig. There has been no apology. No, there wouldn't be. My life was saved. Thank you for saving my life. I am facing you, now, in silence. Just what did you take from me that you replaced with terror? Heart-stopping fear inhabits my alert and suspicious brain. Something deep inside my head Still tells me you wish me dead.