Test a person’s Profession by their
Practice – Physician, Heal Thyself!²
A Doctor Buries his Patient’s Existential
Despair under a heap of Tranquilizing Drugs³
I Instill the Pain – Surgeons Assuage in Vain⁴
Doctors’ Usefulness does not depend on making
The Patient swallow substances for the most part
Harmful – but they’re Indispensable because they
Satisfy a Mental need of the Sick & their Family⁵
Doctors play Against a Sickness Past their Cure⁶
May a new Clinic rise to Cure all Ills its site
Is host to – and not Mistreat the Desperate⁷
The Medicines he gives out are only for
Show: most hurts Heal by Themselves⁸
Healers in these parts can make
One WHOLE – or Deathly Ill⁹
Now let us see what Remains,
After such Surgical Ingenuity¹⁰
¹ Ocean Vuong, Almost Human
² Aesop tr. Thomas James, The Quack Frog
³ Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
⁴ Emily Dickinson, Ah, Necromancy Sweet
⁵ Leo Tolstoy tr. Louise and Aylmer Maude, War and Peace
⁶ Robert Lowell, Mr. Edwards and the Spider
⁷ Alan Dugan, Dedication for a Building
⁸ Madeline Miller, Circe
⁹ C.D. Wright, Deepstep Come Shining
¹⁰ C.P. Cavafy tr. Rae Dalven, In a Famous Greek Colony, 200 B.C.