The Elephant Man Recalled Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

(for Joseph Carey Merrick and after the film by David Lynch)


it seemed to him that he should be

the same as others

that he should lay down his head


at Bethel and see the heavens open

the angels descend on ladders

filaments of the stars.


how hard his pillow why would it matter

if he could dream God was not far

oh from the mocked misunderstood


the misshapen vessel that he was

lumbering amid the tiaraed.

flocked to by the tittering crowds.


feted and lovely the center of all praise


he knew he knew he would never be but leprous-


lonely in his days beyond all human anguish to withstand

and in his carnival life abandoned

so ridiculed the elephant man I see him


at the end on a silken pillow sink

as if to say, just once let me be like them


with a dreamlike visage, brokenness

the final snap of the knotted thread he almost sped



into the arms of the crucified Lord.


mary angela douglas 27 august 2019