sheena blackhall (18/8/1947 / Aberdeen)

Sir Alexander Morison was glad
To see the patient coming on so well
The schizophrenic painter, Richard Dadd

As cases go, the strangest that he'd had
That portrait/landscape painted in his cell
You'd never guess by that, the man was mad

Newhaven's where the medic loved to gad
Sir Alexander knew each brook and dell
On leave from Bedlam- his own Iliad

Seeking the perfect cure to aid the sad
To lift them from their black, psychotic Hell
To drive out every phobia, fetish, fad

But when the painter's canvases were clad
With fiendish fairies, dwarves, and arsenal
Of Elfland's worst: a fluttering myriad

Of raw insanity. All that was bad
Arose from there…it cast a wicked spell
On filial love. As cold as Leningrad

Richard, behind a welcoming façade
Murdered his father, butchered when he fell
Dead in the daisies, a grotesque salàd
The schizophrenic painter, Richard Dadd