Snow by Louis MacNeice

The room was suddenly rich and the great bay-window was
Spawning snow and pink roses against it
Soundlessly collateral and incompatible:
World is suddener than we fancy it.

World is crazier and more of it than we think,
Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion
A tangerine and spit the pips and feel
The drunkenness of things being various.

And the fire flames with a bubbling sound for world
Is more spiteful and gay than one supposes—
On the tongue on the eyes on the ears in the palms of one’s hands—
There is more than glass between the snow and the huge roses.

I’ve written about reading (alphabetbrains.com/advice/reading) before and how you can find connections to your brain injury in books unrelated to brain injury. (I’ve actually got better since writing that blog post! I can now read in noisy places!) Room by Emma Donoghue is one of those books, this poem and the two sentences I’ve made bold anyway. (Yes, I googled the poem to see if it was real because this is a fiction book… Haha) World is suddener than we fancy it. World is crazier and more of it than we think.  As brain injury survivors these two lines relate to our noise sensitivity and how overwhelming the world can be because of it. So simple, but the words really spoke to me.

Little reading tip, that I followed with this book: If you’re struggling to enjoy reading or get back into reading. Read a that you’ve already read that you know you love and you’ll be back into reading again, and more importantly you’ll be wanting to read every day again!

Do you have any books or poetry that speak to you?

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