Listen to the world’s best poetry read out loud.

The bluebottle, in helmet and goggles, circuits the ward, 

a mad aviator who will end up in Casualty. Beds glide past 

like battleships rising out of the mist of a warm sea; 

on board, the infirm drift towards the horizon of their pain 

or the sure footfall of land. It stops. Plaster of Paris 

is warily explored by six legs; oiled suckers 

scale the smooth incline that coats a tibia, until 

a launch towards the menu of new discovery: 

four-star restaurant of the sluice, chic diner of damp sheets. 

Everywhere nurses frown like distracted doormen 

at its presence; its appetite is frequently denied 

by waving hand, brandished magazine. Rumour has it 

the basement contains a delicatessen of cold meat, 

name-tags gracing big toes. For now, shrivelled grape 

and crumpled tissue suffice, though it hopes 

for a used dressing before the day is out. Wings  

beat on, conveying it to the curtailment of desire: 

gorged satisfaction; exhaustion locking it to a ceiling; 

houseman’s irritated swot. Until then, to cruise 

is to live, chained to the freedom of hunger and disease, 

magnetised by bound wound and drained groin, 

sickened by its own aerial insistence.