‘Flame’: Poet and Nurse Romalyn Ante’s Response to the Monument to Florence Nightingale (1820–1910) by Arthur George Walker RA, 1916
Flame
By Romalyn Ante
There is a kind of flame that mends,
it illuminates the wounds
I wash, dress, re-dress each day.
It spills, jasper-red,
from the split, sweet fruit
in the hand of the man
with the bandaged head.
It swirls in the curl of my palm
as I tap the back of my patient
until he can breathe again.
This is the truth:
the bringer of light
is the one illuminated.
Your broken body hauls itself up,
strengthens my spine.
Your half-numb, humming mouth
softens my sleepless nights.
There is a kind of flame that stirs,
ignites what’s dark—
even the hallway shadows vanish
and appear like a flock of birds.
About Romalyn Ante
Romalyn Ante is a Filipino-British, Wolverhampton-based poet, editor, and author. She is co-founding editor of harana poetry, a magazine for poets who write in English as a second or parallel language, and founder of Tsaá with Roma, an online interview series with poets and other creatives. Her debut collection is Antiemetic for Homesickness (Chatto & Windus). She was recently awarded the Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowship 2021/22.
Her honours include the Poetry London Prize, Manchester Poetry Prize, Society of Author’s Foundation Award, Arts Council ‘Developing Your Creative Practice’ Award, Creative Future Literary Award, amongst others. Her debut pamphlet, Rice & Rain (V Press), received the 2018 Saboteur Award for Best Poetry Pamphlet.
As well as being a writer, she also works full-time as a nurse practitioner, specializing in providing different psychotherapeutic treatments.
Visit Romalyn Ante’s website and find her on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
About the Monument
Florence Nightingale (1820–1910) is considered the founder of modern nursing. She came to prominence as the ‘Lady with the Lamp’ in Scutari during the Crimean war, where she transformed the care of wounded and sick soldiers. She later founded the nursing school at St Thomas’ Hospital London, and she was also a powerful advocate of social reform and a statistician.
The sculptor Arthur George Walker RA (1861–1936) created three memorials to Florence Nightingale, following her death in 1910 at the age of 90: a wall monument for St Paul’s Cathedral; one for the chapel at St Thomas’ (a plaster version of the St Paul’s monument); and a bronze statue with relief panels on the plinth, part of the Crimea memorial in Waterloo Place, London . The monument in the crypt of St Paul’s Cathedral carries the words ‘Blessed are the merciful’, a quotation from the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:7) and represents Nightingale ministering to a bedridden soldier in the Crimea. The white marble of the relief panel contrasts with the luminescence and striking markings of the alabaster surround.
International Nurses Day is held each year on 12 May, Florence Nightingale’s Birthday. In the UK it is celebrated with a special service at Westminster Abbey, during which a lighted lamp is processed from the Florence Nightingale Chapel to the High Altar.