I point to where the pain is, the ache

where the blockage is. Here.

The doctor shakes his head at me. Yes

he says, I have that, we all have.

They put the wire in again, on the monitor

I watch the grey map of my heart, the bent

ladder of the spine that outlasts it.

How does it feel? they ask. Here?

I am moving away down the long corridors

of abandoned trolleys, the closed wings

Íof hospitals, rooms full of yellow bedpans

and screens and walker frames, fading out/

into nothing and nothing at all, as we do,

as we all do, as it happens, and no one

can talk of it. Here, where the heart

dies, where all the systems are dying.

It is never my intention to analyse the poems that I choose in an academic way; I do not wish to dismantle their mechanics, or identify and discuss iambic trimeters (being six iambic feet) and pararhymes (almost-rhymes) because there are plentiful books that deal with that kind of forensic literary dissection.

It is the subject of the poem that arouses my interest, and the manner in which we are mirrored; how it relates to you or me or Uncle Jack down the road; our wounds and our pain, our happiness and triumphs - although it should be noted that in all the poems I read the latter is in short supply. It seems that the challenges of living elicit the most eloquent and powerful verse, and sometimes that power is delivered in a quiet voice. A gentle verse about something seemingly simple might touch on a nerve that runs through all of us, and before we know it the wider implications have shocked us into a state of realisation.

That is how I feel about this poem: “Here” is where “the blockage” is; it is also the present moment (and place) in any of our lives. The “ache” appears to be the ache of ageing - even the poet's doctor says “I have that, we all have”. “Here” is also wherever the poet is. He may be in hospital as a result of some myocardial infarction that now requires monitoring, but wherever he is, he is aware of the transience of life, at the end of which is not triumph, or the winning of a race, but death.

We evolve throughout our generations, and we evolve too (we hope) as individuals during our own lifetime. Part of our evolution is the awareness and understanding of our unavoidable death. We all know that we will die, even as those we have loved and lost have died, but as we grow older the awareness of death becomes increasingly present, more in the “here and now”, especially if we are ill or infirm.

In the presence of the monitor the poet observes that his heart will be outlasted by his spine; bones being all that is left when the flesh has rotted. His degeneration is represented in his mind by moving away down the corridors of disused hospital wings, their closure echoing his own.

He feels himself “fading out/ into nothing ... as we all do” and notes that “No one/ can talk of it”, perhaps because our instinct for survival dictates that, while we may respect death, we must ignore it - even as it approaches with increasing speed - or we will attempt nothing, achieve nothing, learn nothing; we'll just sit and wait.

Knowing that our time is limited, we should let old jealousies fall away and old resentments become meaningless; we should attempt to make each day better than it might otherwise have been if we had not made the effort. And those younger than us should know that they walk in the same shoes: “Here, where the heart/ dies, where all the systems are dying.” So that compassion governs their behaviour towards those whose age appears far removed and alien, yet whose place they will take in due course.

frieda.hughes@thetimes.co.uk