I came upon this bit of literary engineering by D. M. Thomas in Best SF: 1969 (ed. Harry Harrison and Brian W. Aldiss). I love the project idea, but I don’t endorse all the content.<\/p>\n
| <\/th>\n | A<\/th>\n | B<\/th>\n | <\/th>\n | C<\/th>\n | D<\/th>\n | E<\/th>\n | F<\/th>\n | G<\/th>\n | H<\/th>\n | I<\/th>\n | J<\/th>\n | K<\/th>\n | L<\/th>\n | M<\/th>\n | N<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| \n 1<\/div>\n<\/th>\n <\/td>\n | <\/td>\n | <\/td>\n | Body of:<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | \n | 2<\/div>\n<\/th>\n <\/td>\n | <\/td>\n | <\/td>\n | Priest<\/th>\n | Soldier<\/th>\n | Whore<\/th>\n | Gardener<\/th>\n | Sadist<\/th>\n | Virgin<\/th>\n | Psychologist<\/th>\n | Stakhanovite<\/th>\n | Scientist<\/th>\n | Composer<\/th>\n | Masochist<\/th>\n | Surgeon<\/td><\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n | \n <\/th>\n | <\/td>\n | <\/td>\n | <\/td>\n | <\/td>\n | <\/td>\n | <\/td>\n | <\/td>\n | <\/td>\n | <\/td>\n | <\/td>\n | <\/td>\n | <\/td>\n | <\/td>\n | <\/td>\n | <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | \n | 3<\/div>\n<\/th>\n Heart of:<\/td>\n | Priest<\/th>\n | <\/td>\n | <\/td>\n | Bending sadly over his enemy he gave him his cup of grace.<\/td>\n | Absolved by her, he lit a small candle.<\/td>\n | He told folwers they would rise again if they were holy<\/td>\n | Religiously he choked evil spirits out of her.<\/td>\n | She stopped at the laying on of hands.<\/td>\n | He strove to marry the schizophrenic, whose tongue could not find his name.<\/td>\n | From his crane-pulpit he made a new heaven, new earth.<\/td>\n | In a smear of communion-wine: DNA of God.<\/td>\n | He believed in the triad, three-in-one, one-in-three.<\/td>\n | Lunchtime eucharist. Her sad, broiler flesh stigmatised.<\/td>\n | In the waiting flesh he made a vertical and transverse cut.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | \n | 4<\/div>\n<\/th>\n Soldier<\/th>\n | <\/td>\n | He baptised the little ones with fire.<\/td>\n | <\/td>\n | After the fray she withdrew completely exploding bridges.<\/td>\n | Unimaginatively he heard the insecticides silent rain.<\/td>\n | Her nails left stripes on arms, epaulettes on shoulders.<\/td>\n | She made them retreat from the capital’s gates through snow.<\/td>\n | Bravely he climbed down into sewers where the Resistance lurked.<\/td>\n | Sagging dugs fed her tenth son to a patriot’s death.<\/td>\n | On Mt. Palomar: Such multitudes! And more in reverse.<\/td>\n | Choric Ode Warsaw Ghetto<\/i> for unaccompanied keening of mothers.<\/td>\n | She guided the gun barrel between her lips.<\/td>\n | The enemy on x-ray. We will attack at first light.<\/i><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | \n | 5<\/div>\n<\/th>\n Whore<\/th>\n | <\/td>\n | He loved all men equally.<\/td>\n | He did not question their instructions.<\/td>\n | <\/td>\n | Where he planted used condoms, a gard of limbo.<\/td>\n | Shagging her, he pulled away from the intimacy of a kiss.<\/td>\n | She hung hesitant at the entrance of unlit alleys.<\/td>\n | If he were not paid for his skill their souls would feel enslaved.<\/td>\n | He holidayed in santinarium. Regained health.<\/td>\n | Inadequate theories passed each other on the stairs.<\/td>\n | All day at the piano, the spume of notes breaking and idling back.<\/td>\n | He dreamt he was a jewes in the Auschwitz brothel.<\/td>\n | Cunningly his hands moved as though we were operating.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | \n | 6<\/div>\n<\/th>\n Gardener<\/th>\n | <\/td>\n | The butterfly evading his touch he mistook for Jesus.<\/td>\n | Where the shell struck, poppies bloomed from the astounded body.<\/td>\n | Two roses in the hot-house; one overblown one cankered.<\/td>\n | <\/td>\n | While police raged he cultivated his garden quietly at night.<\/td>\n | She regretted pollinization by the wind.<\/td>\n | How could he restore the lost paradise beneath Suicide City?<\/td>\n | He drilled desert after desert, Planting a future forever receding.<\/td>\n | By morning, the culture had flowered unrecognizably.<\/td>\n | Instrumentation of a hot summer’s day, concerto for busy ephemera.<\/td>\n | The cooked and ate the insecticide-ridden plants.<\/td>\n | The steering column was grafted into the beautiful girl’s breast.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | \n | 7<\/div>\n<\/th>\n Sadist<\/th>\n | <\/td>\n | He pictured a femal Messiah’s bloodied, heaving breasts.<\/td>\n | Afterwards, no one found it was only the moon rising over Finland.<\/td>\n | She left their mutilated bodies in backstreet hotels.<\/td>\n | The face of the rose purpled, crumpled.<\/td>\n | <\/td>\n | Take me!<\/i> she said, as the bus left, in church, on the big dipper.<\/i><\/td>\n | He restored naturals to sanity.<\/td>\n | His skill faltered by an inch in the third story of the skyscraper.<\/td>\n | Test tube in hand, he stood over the city’s reservoir.<\/td>\n | He ended all movements with imperfect cadences.<\/td>\n | She had herself whipped by a reluctant weeping masochist.<\/td>\n | Religious he refused to cut away.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | \n | 8<\/div>\n<\/th>\n Virgin<\/th>\n | <\/td>\n | He swooned at the snakeflesh of the communicant’s tongue.<\/td>\n | He did not know if he had died in that attack.<\/td>\n | She wept at her inviolate purity.<\/td>\n | Spring congress: nature’s pandering shocked him.<\/td>\n | She told her daughter You are ugly the world must not see you.<\/td>\n | <\/td>\n | His fingers holding the pencil trembled. His cheeks blushed.<\/td>\n | He shuddered as the road drill clove soft earth.<\/td>\n | He shivered at the neutrino cleaving light years of lead.<\/td>\n | Convent bells over the fields stirred his heart to new modes.<\/td>\n | He kept himself untouched.<\/td>\n | Seventy years he fought to save the small tissues.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | \n | 9<\/div>\n<\/th>\n Psychologist<\/th>\n | <\/td>\n | He considered Christ’s over-compensatory Oedipus complex.<\/td>\n | Bayoneted, he watched his killer’s face.<\/td>\n | She asked them why they did this.<\/td>\n | Autumn divorce: psychosis of Kore lengthened.<\/td>\n | He studied the child’s face.<\/td>\n | Lying on her lonely couch, she made notes on her case.<\/td>\n | <\/td>\n | He felt for the huge machine’s pent-up sexual energy.<\/td>\n | He observed the expression on the dog’s transplanted head.<\/td>\n | At the first performance he watched the faces of the audience.<\/td>\n | On her couch of nails, she took notes on herself.<\/td>\n | Skimming the memory cells his lancet found the trauma.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | \n | 10<\/div>\n<\/th>\n Stakhanovite<\/th>\n | <\/td>\n | In his confessional, a camp bed.<\/td>\n | He wanted to be the firing squad for the world.<\/td>\n | She frigged the hunover gray morning into cupfinal night.<\/td>\n | He dreamt himself sole survivor and named Adam.<\/td>\n | He emigrated to South Africa.<\/td>\n | She took the veil.<\/td>\n | He emigrated to the States.<\/td>\n | <\/td>\n | If only nature had covered up its tracks more cunningly.<\/td>\n | His 999th Symphony was his last. Sketches of the 1000ths remain.<\/td>\n | He longed to believe in the consolation of Hell.<\/td>\n | He said We must take out the lot.<\/i><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | \n | 11<\/div>\n<\/th>\n Scientist<\/th>\n | <\/td>\n | So many worlds! So many galaxies! So many saviors!<\/td>\n | The silent village forgave him, for not using germ warfare.<\/td>\n | As her sighs quickened, she graphed their heartbeats.<\/td>\n | Birds hooded, flowers shut: everwhere entropy accepted.<\/td>\n | He experimented with the velocity of falling bodies.<\/td>\n | She feared the Pill, she feared it.<\/td>\n | Uncertainty: observing quanta changed by his observing.<\/td>\n | Give me an ideology and I will move the whole earth.<\/td>\n | <\/td>\n | Tone-poem Jodrell Bank.<\/i> The cracklings of infinite space.<\/td>\n | Singlehanded she sailed for the atom-test island.<\/td>\n | He toiled to turn inert mass into energy again.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | \n | 12<\/div>\n<\/th>\n Composer<\/th>\n | <\/td>\n | Through all troubling modulations always the home-key.<\/td>\n | He wrote a victory march for the refugees to sing.<\/td>\n | Afire with impatience, she felt its percussive rhythm.<\/td>\n | Violets muted trumpets, then spring’s full sweet jazz.<\/td>\n | He looked at the inert score he played with too much brio.<\/td>\n | Night-music. The wind’s singers clicking sadly her bones.<\/td>\n | Slowly he collected all the strange lost tunes of the mad.<\/td>\n | He could listen to the song of a tractor forever.<\/td>\n | He played moon-light sonata of the cool star’s spectrum.<\/td>\n | <\/td>\n | Dies Irae, Her favorite lovesong.<\/td>\n | He gasped at the cancer’s unexpected counterpoint.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | \n | 13<\/div>\n<\/th>\n Masochist<\/th>\n | <\/td>\n | As the rope tightened, he offered to die instead.<\/td>\n | He turned the napalm inwards.<\/td>\n | She made love for love.<\/td>\n | He fecundated the Venus flytrap.<\/td>\n | He lashed a masochist who cried with joy.<\/td>\n | All night her moist, lustrous eyes begged him not ot rape her.<\/td>\n | He drove the devils out and into his own Gaderene mind.<\/td>\n | He toiled to complete the robot which would destroy him.<\/td>\n | Love bites of laboratory rats.<\/td>\n | He destroyed his magnum opus. Only God was worthy of it.<\/td>\n | <\/td>\n | He turned the scalpel inward.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | \n | 14<\/div>\n<\/th>\n Surgeon<\/th>\n | <\/td>\n | The one he had lost, not the ninety-nine he had saved.<\/td>\n | Heart transplant. He sent them to slave factories in the fatherland.<\/td>\n | She felt the hump on his back with skilled healing fingers.<\/td>\n | Plantation of transplantation. All members of one body.<\/td>\n | He said To whip you externally is not enough.<\/td>\n | Loving her, he allowed her to tenderly emasculate him.<\/td>\n | For freedom the patient must find her heart grasped by hands.<\/td>\n | Onto church-rubble he transplanted the factory.<\/td>\n | Man came: slowly, heart grafted into the universe.<\/td>\n | Thirty years he cut, sighed, stitched up the white silence.<\/td>\n | Lovebites in his old diseased heart.<\/td>\n | <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" | I came upon this bit of literary engineering by D. M. Thomas in Best SF: 1969 (ed. Harry Harrison and Brian W. Aldiss). I love the project idea, but I don’t endorse all the content. A B C D E F G H I J K L M N 1 … Continue reading Hospital of Transplanted Hearts<\/span> |