Anatomists' work song

Kevin Matthews; Cindy Stelmackowich

doi:10.1503/cmaj.090062

If not in death
where would we live?
Wrap the night slowly
draw the borders tighter
round our cadaverous caverns.
Woe to the scholar
with insufficient vanity.

and so to work
torn
between scalpel and slab

Call me cartographer;
sternum quill stenographer
Implements of rumination
ruin read for oracles
a geography of fellows.
I am conquistador of corpses
chevalier de la chair inconnue
tanned, salted and ripe for plunder
chaste from forest to glade
navigated, irrigated, in ruin remade.

If not for breath
what could we give?
Mind the cavity, cool the spade.
Ponderous plumb, hook and gravity
bind the finding fingers of
the hand that made the hand that made.
The rational apparatus
the sick proficient sanity,
the gift of cold calamity.

Call me animator;
call them marionette.
Split and sorted
for posterity, for cybernetic sport.
Reboot this dismantled frame and drift into wakefulness
full into life.
Whisper in your sleep, my specimen.
Beg for the knife.

If not with memory
why fill these cells?
Spill into the spelunking shell,
reliquary of delight and shrinking tales to tell
how she rose, how she fell.
Shrieks, peaks,
for rattles, battles and for death knells.

Call me pornographer
clasping fast to phantasm
eros engaging ectoplasm
lurid lens unfettered
by membrane or morality.
My mission subcutaneous
dare not to undermine
science
my wholesome desire
stroking toward
scattered shrapnel of the sublime
shivering glimpse even of the divine

I see vehicles
of demise
still life in profusion

I draw everything
but breath
and thus conclusion.

Cindy Stelmackowich, Burning of the Market-House at Kingston, Canada West — July 4, 1865 (2008) (detail). Ultrachromium print. 36 × 51 cm. Image by: Cindy Stelmackowich

Cindy Stelmackowich, A Frozen Fire in Montreal — c. 1800s (2008) (detail). Ultrachromium print. 36 × 51 cm. Image by: Cindy Stelmackowich

Cindy Stelmackowich, The Last Charge of Napoleon's Old Guard at the Battle of Waterloo, Belgium — June 18, 1815 (2008) (detail). Ultrachromium print. 36 × 51 cm. Image by: Cindy Stelmackowich

Footnotes

These images are from Anatomy: In Ruins and Remade, an exhibition at the Patrick Mikhail Gallery in Ottawa, Ont., Feb. 4–Mar. 4, 2009. Ms. Stelmackowich is an artist, curator and teacher whose artwork related to medical science has been exhibited across North America.

Mr. Matthews has performed his poetry in front of audiences around Canada — from hundreds to handfuls, and from symphonic concert halls to correctional facilities.