24 FEBRUARY 2007, Page 26

Hospital Music

In the square at St Bartholomew's hospital, Crates of flowers are stacked for bedding out Round the plane trees. Patients with paper cups sit about In wheelchairs or under the shelters. Above, in the hall, An orchestra is rehearsing: a Mozart piano concerto, The Bach double, some Handel — clearly audible outside Through the fountain's splash, as if filling a tide Or a sound the wind makes. Nobody seems to know It is there. A youth with a reconstructed face Glares at a girl, grey-lidded, lip-white, drip-fed Who stares at a scabbed tree permanently disfigured, While nurses, a doctor, go by at a determined pace. Either the sound is of all things the most natural Or there is no connction of any kind, none at all.

Charles Chadwick