'Broken Neck' by Robert Graves

I keep his 'Collected Poems' on my Kindle of course but yesterday I took the Penguin edition that Eleanor gave me a long time ago and it fell open at this poem. Inevitably it is a love poem, since no one else has ever written as well and as comprehensively about that particular matter.

 Do challenge ( with examples please!) that assertion.

BROKEN NECK

'Some forty years or maybe more'
Pronounced the radiologist,'you broke
Your neck: that is to say, contrived to fracture
Your sixth cervical vertebra - see here,
The picture's clear - and between sixth and seventh
Flattened this cartilage to uselessness:
Hence rheumatism. Surely you recall
Some incident? We all do foolish things
While young, and obstinately laugh them off -
Till they catch up with us in God's own time.
Let me prescribe you a Swiss analgesic
Which should at least.....'
                          Love, I still laugh it off
And all such Swiss mercenary alleviations,
For though I broke my neck in God's good time,
It is in yours alone I choose to live.



From 'Man Does, Woman is'




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