Vertigo
Vertigo - meaning Summary
Age, Fall, and Recovery
Murray’s poem recounts a humiliating fall and its medical aftermath as a prompt for reflection on aging, vulnerability, and practical protections. The speaker moves from a specific accident to general advice about grab-bars and railings, imagining physical supports as defenses against loss of balance and dignity. Images of practical domestic fixes and classical rubble combine to suggest how small injuries expose mortality and change how others treat you.
Read Complete AnalysesLast time I fell in a shower room I bled like a tumbril dandy and the hotel longed to be rid of me. Taken to the town clinic, I described how I tripped on a steel rim and found my head in the wardrobe. Scalp-sewn and knotted and flagged I thanked the Frau Doktor and fled, wishing the grab-bar of age might be bolted to all civilization and thinking of Rome's eighth hill heaped up out of broken amphorae. When, anytime after sixty, or anytime before, you stumble over two stairs and club your forehead on rake or hoe, bricks or fuel-drums, that's the time to call the purveyor of steel pipe and indoor railings, and soon you'll be grasping up landings having left your balance in the car from which please God you'll never see the launchway of tires off a brink. Later comes the sunny day when street detail whitens blindly to mauve and people hurry you, or wait, quiet.
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