A poem which deals with a strong emotion is ‘Visiting Hour’ by Norman MacCaig. This poem is only thirty-eight lines long and it vividly portrays a visit to a dying relative or friend in hospital.
In the first stanza, the narrator is preoccupied with the sensations experienced on visiting hospital. He describes the penetrating disinfectant smell of the hospital and how it ‘combs my nostrils’. Then he imagines these nostrils
‘…bobbing along
green and yellow corridors.’
These nostrils seem to have a life of their own and it is a curious image. The visitor clearly wants to think about anything except the visit he is due to make.
The visitor’s first encounter with a patient is when he sees a body on a trolley and uses the words, ‘What seems a corpse’. This suggested to me that the thought of death was on his mind. Also, the visitor says that the trolley ‘vanishes’ into a lift, reminding us of the suddenness with which a whole person can disappear, particularly in hospital. The final word in the stanza, ‘heavenward’, sitting on a line alone (enjambment), reminds us of the visitor’s hope that heaven is close to the hospital.
In the following stanza the visitor tries to stifle his feeling of panic about his visit. He uses repetition to say that, ‘I will not feel’. Again enjambment is used with the final phrase, ‘I have to’, to focus on the obligation which the visitor feels about his visit.
As he moves through the building, his eye is drawn to the nurses who walk
‘…lightly, swiftly,
here and up and down and there…’
His word choice and the unusual word order emphasise the actions of nursing staff busily moving around the building. I thought the words suggested that the nurses have an almost superhuman capacity, like angels. They move in three dimensions and are associated with death and departure. The narrator also sees the nurses’
‘…eyes
still clear after
so many farewells.’
This made me think that the narrator was amazed that the nurses could cope with working in an environment where death is always present.
The next stanza starts with a minor sentence. He has reached his destination – ‘Ward 7.’. His next sentence begins with the words ‘She lies’, giving us the idea that she is lying, but also that her appearance is not what he expected. The ‘white cave of forgetfulness’ in which she lies could be the white-curtained corner of the hospital, or could be a metaphor for the mental cave she is in, where she has forgotten about him because of her pain or strong drugs. Another metaphor compares the hand of the patient to a dying flower. It is ‘withered’ and it ‘trembles on its stalk’. Also, ‘a glass fang is fixed’ into her arm. This mixes imagery of vampires and death with the idea of a medical drip providing nourishment for the patient – ‘not guzzling but giving’.
The sad thing is that when the visitor has reached the bedside, he cannot speak properly with her, because of the ‘distance of pain’ between them. This metaphor reminds us that she barely knows he is there and that he is unable to communicate with her.
At the start of the final stanza the poet writes
‘She smiles a little at this
Black figure in her white cave’
I thought that this could either be the final smile of recognition or a thankful smile at a black figure who could be 'Death'. The visitor then departs ‘in the round swimming waves of a bell’. This is synaesthesia, where words normally applied to water are used to intensify the effect of the bells which ends the visit. It also suggests that his eyes have filled with tears.
The visitor is very unhappy as he departs and he leaves behind only
‘books that will not be read
and fruitless fruits.’
These unread books are useless. The ‘fruitless fruits’, left at the bedside of a woman who is only an empty shell, suggest an emotional ending to the visit.
‘Visiting Hour’ makes a big impact on the reader. It was obviously written by someone who had the experience of visiting someone dying in hospital, however, it was the word choice and the thoughtful use of poetic technique which made reading it a worthwhile experience for me.
