Pathology of colours

20 Pathology of colours Dannie Abse I know the colour rose, and it is lovely, but not when it ripens in a tumour; and healing greens, leaves and grass, so springlike, in limbs that fester are not springlike. I have seen red-blue tinged with hirsute mauve in the plum-skin face of a suicide. I have seen white, china white almost, stare from behind the smashed windscreen of a car. And the criminal, multi-coloured flash of an H-bomb is no more beautiful than an autopsy when the belly's opened— to show cathedral windows never opened. So in the simple blessing of a rainbow, in the bevelled edge of a sunlit mirror, I have seen, visible, Death's artifact like a soldier's ribbon on a tunic tacked. ...