English - Visiting Hour

“combs my nostrils“

Word Choice - Uncomfortable

“Black Figure”

Word choice - Death

“Waves of a bell”

Word Choice - End of visiting hour

“Seems a corpse”

Word Choice  - They are afraid of death 

“many deaths, their eyes

still clear after”

Word choice - Showing strength after seeing so many upsetting scenes.

Green and yellow corridors

Synecdoche - Sterile

White cave

Word choice - contrast between the speaker as a black figure

\-woman in the “white cave” who is dying, while the “black figure” is alive and well

Fruits

Word choice - suggest health and life, but this woman is very ill and about to die

She lies

in a white cave of forgetfulness.

Imagery  - Shows isolation, cut off from the rest of the world.

trundled into a lift and vanishes

Word Choice  - Shows how life can come and go 

A withered hand

trembles on its stalk.

Imagery  - Shows weakness in the arm, trembling, withered, old and dying.

She smiles a little at this

Word choice - shows how much her illness is limiting her and that she cannot respond fully to her visitor

heavenward

Word Choice - Represents heaven because they are in a hospital 

I will not feel, I will not

feel, until

Structure/Enjambement - What the patient is going through

distance of pain that neither she nor I can cross

Word Choice - his emotional pain and her physical pain are too hard to overcome

books that will not be read

Word choice - The tone shows that these gifts are pointless as they will not be read after death

Nurses walk lightly, swiftly

Word Choice - This is saying that in tough times they still get on with their work 

Into an arm wasted

of colour a glass fang is fixed,

not guzzling but giving.

Word Choice - This shows how even the evil of the fang can actually be helpful by giving.

books that will not be read

Word choice - The tone shows that these gifts are pointless as they will not be read after death

their slender waists

Word Choice - Shows how well composed they are through all the difficulty.

distance of pain that neither she nor I

can cross.

Word choice - She is somewhere he could never be

carrying their burden

of so much pain

Word Choice - They have been through pain and misery that they have made a legacy out of it