Panic Attack
Panic Attack - meaning Summary
Nightmare of the Body
Murray's poem depicts a sudden panic attack as a bodily nightmare that obliterates calm and thought. Physical symptoms—racing heart, chest pain, stomach upheaval—merge with mental voids of speech, desire, and prayer. The speaker treats the episode as an overwhelming, isolating event that nonetheless falls short of death. The final lines offer quiet assurance: the crisis will pass and balance will be restored, framing the attack as temporary and survivable.
Read Complete AnalysesThe body had a nightmare. Awake. No need of the movie. No need of light, to keep hips and shoulders rotating in bed on the gimbals of wet eyes. Pounding heart, chest pains - should it be the right arm hurting? The brain was a void or a blasted-out chamber - shreds of speech in there, shatters of lust and prayer. No one can face their heart or turn their back on it. Bowel stumbled to bowl, emptied, and emptied again till the gut was a train crawling in its own tunnel, slowly dragging the nightmare down with it, below heart level. You would not have died the fear had been too great but: to miss the ambulance moment - Relax. In time, your hourglass will be reversed again.
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