COMING TO TERMS WITH SCHIZOPHRENIA Poem by Barry Tebb

Why our son, why?

Every morning the same dark chorus wakes me

And I wonder how I am still alive.

'Balance the forces of life and death'

Is the Kleinian recipe for survival.

'It is God's will, life is meant to test us'

My Christian heritage tells me.

'Life is a vale of soul making'

Keats reminds us.

Insistently the morning traffic hums

As I sip my tea, list calls to make,

Sigh in frustration at unread books.

For solace I look at cards of Haworth

Moorland vistas of unending paths

Cloudscapes only a Constable could paint

High Withens in a gale, the sloping village street.

How? When? Why?

‘The truth' - if such an entity exists -

Is that I want to run away.