Date Published: 14th April 2020

One of the most striking images of this time of crisis has been that of people coming to the doors of their houses to express their gratitude to doctors, nurses, care workers, and ambulance drivers – and all those working in the hospitals and clinics. This applause for the people who care for others has been heartfelt and poignant. These people have been putting their own health and lives at risk to help the sick. Now we have come to realise that all about us there are heroes.

This poem is about those people – medical staff of every description. We meet them first when we are born; they watch over us through the years. Suddenly they are needed more than ever before and we see that they have never left us – they are still there.

(You can see and hear Alexander reading this poem on the website of the London Sunday Times)

Those who care

None of us remembers that first meeting –

Tumbling out into a very different world,

Into your receiving hands;

Blinking at the light, we breathed

The strangeness of oxygen

Saw the unfamiliar walls

Of the delivery room,

And the first ceiling we had ever

Looked at and wondered what it was.

That was the first thing

You did for us: welcomed us,

Ushered us into infancy

And childhood, and the years beyond.

We never thanked you

But do so now, rather late,

But with all the feeling

Of the long overdue

Expression of gratitude,

The tardy repayment

Of an ancient debt.

Since then, from time to time,

You have picked us up,

Dusted us down, bandaged

The occasional consequence

Of our failure to look

Where we’re going

Or to behave quite as we might;

Tolerant, like all good

Members of your professions,

You said nothing, but did

What was necessary.

And sent us on our way,

Patched up and healed.

Now, quite suddenly, we call on you,

And the call is an urgent one,

You are there, of course, it never

Occurred to you that you would be

Anywhere else than at our side.

Hour after hour, day after day,

You are there, the support

Of those hands that first delivered us

Embracing us once again,

With the same love, the quiet

And gentle care; once again

We spell out our debt, our gratitude,

You say, “It’s what we do”

We nod and say, “We always knew.”

Alexander McCall Smith, April 2020