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Humanities

Two poems on pain

Dominik Parisien
CMAJ November 18, 2019 191 (46) E1282; DOI: https://doi.org/10.1503/cmaj.190815
Dominik Parisien
Toronto, Ont.
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Bilingual pathways

French people are so hard core they eat pain for breakfast

— Popular meme

pain by any other name would still be

bread

can we unlanguage

associative pathway

unfeel

into sourdough

rye

pumpernickel

rewrite

golden crust

carbohydrate

as synaptic

truth

Figure
Image courtesy of iStock.com/amygdala_imagery

With apologies to those with congenital analgesia

[Note: the rules of the dance are simple: if the caller announces a circumstance that has occurred in the lifetime of you or your partner, you must leave the dance floor at once.]

…

Anyone with pain

— Michael Ondaatje, Elimination Dance (an intermission)

Eliminating those with pain

leaves no one behind.

So ends Ondaatje’s dance,

proclaiming we are one

in this experience,

esoteric & mundane as it is.

This companionship says nothing

of degree.

Compare a sore tooth to a seizure.

Broken clavicle to cystic fibrosis.

Stubbed toe to fibromyalgia.

Say you never danced to begin with,

in pain enough you couldn’t.

Watched with equal guilt & envy,

congenital analgesia on your mind,

that with it you might have danced

& danced & danced

& never even known

you ached.

Footnotes

  • This article has been peer reviewed.

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In this issue

Canadian Medical Association Journal: 191 (46)
CMAJ
Vol. 191, Issue 46
18 Nov 2019
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Two poems on pain
Dominik Parisien
CMAJ Nov 2019, 191 (46) E1282; DOI: 10.1503/cmaj.190815

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Two poems on pain
Dominik Parisien
CMAJ Nov 2019, 191 (46) E1282; DOI: 10.1503/cmaj.190815
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