- © 2005 CMA Media Inc. or its licensors
I enter the rooms where the anxious patients wait
to learn what changelings have been left in their lives,
in their guts. I bring names for these new entities: it is time
to bring them into the light, and christen them.
These are the cataclysmic incidents of understated calm,
the sort that provide key moments in medical television dramas,
only I have no script, my patients are not acting,
and the lighting is poorer.
Cloaked in the white of priesthood, I carry a solemnity
not my own, granted me by Apollo.
At the awkward altar of the hospital bed,
I bow my head before the sacrifice.
I, the medical profession incarnate, declare
what I have read in the entrails, pronounce my interpretation,
foretell the remaining lifespan.
They invariably accept the speaking.
Well, thanks for being honest, Doctor,
at least now I know what the score is.
It amazes me that they accept my naming, or my compassion.
They never ask, how can you know what it is, what it means.
(Me, who's twenty-four, never had anything worse than tonsillitis,
never broken anything except an adolescent heart.)
I am tempted to forget the role I play, step outside it,
stand with Dylan Thomas, railing at their acceptance.
I want to yell, whether or not you know what to call it,
it's going to kill you. Even if you know what it is.
I've seen it happen many times, but still cannot fathom
why the sole act of giving a name brings relief,
as if the christening made it any less deadly —
guess that's why baptism is a sacrament.