“How can you Cure when
You’re Sick?” – “How else?”²
We Prescribe Poems to the Patients³
Illness makes a Festival of Tenderness⁴
How much must this Poor Heart Endure –
Which Hopes from thee, and thee alone: a Cure!⁵
Sickness is Driven Away from our Immortal Day⁶
Against Strange Maladies a Sovereign Cure⁷
Our Healing influence is primarily
Based not on Doing, but on Being⁸
When we Heal Patients we’re an
Open Pipeline for God’s Love⁹
Great Multitudes follow us,
And we Heal them All¹⁰
¹ Lao Tsu tr. Ursula K. Le Guin, Tao Te Ching 71
² Ursula K. Le Guin, Tales from Earthsea
³ Arundhati Roy, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness
⁴ George Eliot, Middlemarch
⁵ William Lisle Bowles, Time and Grief
⁶ William Blake, Night
⁷ William Shakespeare, Sonnet CLIII
⁸ Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now
⁹ Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love
¹⁰ Matthew 12:15 (King James)