Bernard Saint
Pharmacy
1. B.C.
Mix a little flesh
Of venomous snake with garlic
Ginger and judiciously
Add the juice of Asiatic poppy
Then one measure of well-aged wine
The fermentation of the whole
Is commended as a cure-all
To victims of all sudden
Or slow poisonings
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2. A.D.
Opium enters the port
As black bricks in wood boxes
Ground with spice and sherry
Apothecaries carry
‘A penny laudanum’ -
The glass container popular with ladies
A gentleman may order by the pint
For household usage -
Bronchial cough suppressor
Rheumatic and toothache reliever
Teething sleeplessness and menstrual cramps
A boon to all the family
From day of birth to death
3. TODAY
She will not take the doctor’s morphine linctus
So lucidly she curses all her carers
‘Meals are late and often barely warm’
Her room ‘has not been cleaned
For weeks and whose misplaced
Bottle-lensed old spectacles are these?
What have you done with the N.H.S.
Since I retired from it?
Why is it so underfunded and so bloody inefficient?’
She will not take the doctor’s morphine linctus
thistles stretch their prickly arms afar
Bernard Saint was born in 1950 into a rural working-class family. His poetry first appeared in U.K. and U.S.A. magazines and journals from 1964 onwards. Both a literary and performance poet with many public readings and some BBC radio in the 60s and 70s ‘British Poetry Renaissance’; these saw him often in the company of earlier generations of poets including John Heath-Stubbs and Anne Beresford, in whom he found greater affinity. Meary Tambimuttu, the editor of Poetry London in the 40s and resurgent 70s, noted favourable comparisons in his work with Keith Douglas. He has variously performed under the aegis of New Departures, The Poetry Society, Aquarius, Angels of Fire, The Cambridge International Poetry Festival, The Aldeburgh, and The William Alwyn Festivals, and, locally, Ouse Muse. He has taught at Antioch and Johns Hopkins Colleges (U.S.A.) in their London and Oxford summer schools, but preferred inner-city work as an I.L.E.A. special needs tutor in psychiatric hospital settings. He trained in the Jungian approach to Arts Therapies for groups and individuals, working in N.H.S. Psychiatry and in The Robert Smith Alcohol Unit, in both settings as practitioner, supervisor, and also in private practice. Main Poetry Publications: Testament of the Compass (Burns & Oates 1979), Illuminati (Greville Press 2011), Roma (Smokestack Books 2016), Saturae & Satire – poems of John Heath-Stubbs (Ed.) (Greville Press 2016), Welcome Back to the Studio (Cassette only) (Lyrenote 1988). His poetry has also appeared in the anthologies Poems of Science (Penguin 1984) and Transformation (Rivelin Grapheme 1988).