Give me that man
That is not passion’s
slave
Give me that blanket that comforts and soothes
For in my heart
There was a fighting
that would not let me sleep,
Our indiscretion
Sometime serve us
well.
In those wakeful moments’
When around a surgeon’s scalpel the blood congeals
And time is spent to heal.
What a piece of work
is a man
The quintessence of
dust.
What is he
Whose grief bears
such emphasis
Such intricate complexity
Of thought and action?
How noble in reason
How infinite in
faculties
To quell the cry of pain.
How like an angel
How express and
admirable
To drown the misery
And purge the disquiet
Of a thousand natural
shocks
That flesh is heir to
And to take arms
against a sea of trouble
And by opposing, end
them.
Yet within the firmament of that reason
I could be bounded in
a nutshell
And count myself a
king of infinite space,
Were it not that I
have bad dreams.
These dreams, though
this be madness
There is method in’t.
The vile mechanism feeds
And eyes without
feeling
Feeling without sight,
Cannot chart the course to reason.
The spirit that I
have seen, may be a devil
And the devil hath
power t’assume a pleasing shape
Cleave the general
ear with horrid speech,
Make mad the guilty
and appal the free.
These clever studied orphans of untruth
Confound the ignorant and amaze
Indeed the very
faculties of eyes and ears.
They forget in their charted hypocrisy;
This above all: to
thine own self be true,
And it must follow,
as the night the day,
Thou canst not then
be false to any man.
The power that exudes such tyranny
Tis dangerous when
the baser nature comes between
The pass and fell
incensed points of mighty opposites.
They know not what they do
As their power is often fleeting
And the unholy madness, a passing fancy
A man may fish with
the worm that hath eat of a king,
And eat of the fish
that hath fed of that worm
They thus find permanence in indignity
within houses that
last till doomsday.
While chastising nobility, they cry and
Humanity bleeds as one is lost to the many
Eviscerating the noble cause of individuality
The chief good and
market of this time
Is left wanting in art and science,
Or somewhere in between.
This warlike paragon of animals
Abuses me to damn me.
As villainy though it
have no tongue,
Will speak with most
miraculous organ!
One day!
Leaving in its vile dust
This beauty of the world,
This noble of humans
This physician.
In apprehension how
like a god,
I will wear him in my
heart’s core,
Ay, in my heart of
heart
As he grunts and
sweats under the weary life
Bringing comfort through his discomfort
To the one of the many!
This poem is a composite of Shakespeare's eloquent words and some of mine. Juxtaposing with the Bard is tantamount to courting disaster, yet I will "screw my courage to the sticking place!"
Excellent - "...this noble of human...this physician..."
ReplyDeleteIf only we can get pass our frustrations and focus on the greatest benefit to mankind - medicine, may be we can find our place in advancing its cause.