All bodies
Become Sicker Bodies—²
We Sicken to shun sickness.³
Only the Sufferer knows
What the sickness is.⁴
The Spirit can sustain infirmity—
But a Wounded spirit, who can bear?⁵
There’s no difference between men—
In intelligence or race—so profound as the
Difference between the Sick and the Well.⁶
Behold they who Infecteth all the world!⁷
Time destroys what sickness spares.⁸
Sicknesse: Death’s herald & champion.⁹
I that in Heill was and Gladnèss,
Am trublit now with great Sickness
And Feblit with infirmitie—
Timor Mortis Conturbat Me.¹⁰
¹ John Milton, Paradise Lost
² Kaveh Akbar, Forfeiting My Mystique
³ William Shakespeare, Sonnet CXVIII
⁴ Jean Stafford, A Country Love Story
⁵ Proverbs 18:14 (King James)
⁶ F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
⁷ Dante Alighieri tr. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Inferno
⁸ William Broome, The Rosebud
⁹ John Donne, Holy Sonnet IV
¹⁰ William Dunbar, Lament for the Makers