I didn't know him,
the man who jumped from the bridge.
But I saw the parabola
of long-drawn-out falling in the brown
eyes of his wife week after week
at the supermarket cash-out.
We would quietly ask "How is he?"
hear of the hospital's white
care, the corridors between her
and the broken man in the bed,
and the doctors who had no words,
no common supermarket women's talk.
Only after the funeral
I knew how he'd risen, wild
from his chair and told her
he was going out to die.
Very slowly from the first leap
he fell through winter, through the cold
of Christmas, wifely silences,
the blue scare of ambulance,
from his grave on the motorway
to the hospital, two bridges down.
A season later in a slow cortège
he has reached the ground.
by Gillian Clarke
from Letter from a Far Country (1982)
Pentwyn is a district, community and electoral ward in the east of Cardiff, Wales, located northeast of the city centre. Llanedeyrn is immediately to the south, Cyncoed to the west, Pontprennau to the north and the Rhymney River forms the eastern border.
This story of this poem is true albeit half heard from people talking about it and half learned from the local newspaper. The Pentwyn Bridge of the title carries a road over a dual carriageway in Cardiff. Asthe peom narrates a man told his terrified wife he was going out to kill himself. He jumped from the bridge and was severely injured then taken to hospital. Many months later, having never left hospital in the meantime, he finally died.
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