Anglo-Chinese School (Independent)

English Language and Literature Department

Year 2 Language Arts

Class Discussion

Geriatric Ward

Feeding time in the geriatric ward;

I wondered how they found their mouths,
and seeing that not one looked up, inquired
‘Do they have souls?’

5 ‘If I had a machine-gun,’ answered the doctor

‘I’d show you dignity in death instead of living death.
Death wasn’t meant to be kept alive.
But we’re under orders
to pump blood and air in after the mind’s gone.
10 I don’t understand souls;
I only learned about cells
law-abiding as leaves
withering under frost.
But we, never handing over
15 to Mother who knows best,
spray cabbages with oxygen, hoping for a smile,
count pulses of breathing bags whose direction is lost,
and think we’ve won.

Here’s a game you can’t win –

20 One by one they ooze away in the cold.
There’s no society forbidding
this dragged-out detention of the old.’

Phoebe Hesketh

a) What does the speaker think about geriatric wards?

b) How do diction and imagery bring out the theme(s) of the poem?
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