"Babies in Hospital"
[May 1915]
I. Small Elena Of shrunken limbs And ample sex Who Having filched The atrophied Woman-smile of your mother Scatter it On the eating unseen Tuberculous Inaudible hands On the counter-pane It might have been Impossible Fingers should be so long Being so tiny But Nature Needing no microscope In her laboratory Found it just as easy Marshalling imperceptible Hosts To bone of your arm Among overlapping of lint Attaining a dignity Unworthy of your years Two and a half! II. Hail to you Bad little boy Lying In bound beauty Of only a broken leg And thank you For throwing Your bricks on the floor For the third time And the smack You gave me For the thermometer Delightfully male Already gallant You smooth the mackintosh For Elena to sit on beside you Her fragility Being irresistibly for you You are very wise Precocious coquette Who never learnt to talk To look at him Before Your semi-imbecile Eyes shut It is not given to each of us To be desired. III. Tend Do not touch Apparent flowers Of festering secret And the fly-by-nights Such little things I cannot be your mother There are already So many ignorances I am not guilty of. |
Borgo Ognissanti 20, Hospital San Giovanni di Dio.
This is possibly the hospital Loy refers to in this poem. She worked at a hospital during the first World War. Santa Maria Nuovo, Firenze.
This could be the hospital that Loy worked at during World War I |