Ambroise Paré

The Lord be Praised for Ambroise Paré


and more for his helping gentleman hand
weighing, cupping, a footed bowl of rosewater,
the surface spilling over
its lip, sloshing a rag of putrid turpentine,
hearing the sweet sizzle of sour.

Daubing his rag on the lost,
firm fingers became the father to those without,
rolling royal sleeves to the elbow and
painstakingly prying out plans for
the clenching, spring-loaded "Le Petit Lorrain".

Where are you now, enemy of the arabesquing arquebuse?
When will we hear again "Je le pansai, Dieu le guérit"?
"Guérir quelquefois, soulager souvent, consoler toujours", right?

Incised, the arteries bow-tied back,
twitching then imp like a floundering flicker--all white subclavian.
I hardly seem to notice what is already gone:
That strange and grevious fact,
the phantom limb skimming--dancing--off the surface
of that ancient river whose name only
the blind know and only
amputees can pronounce.

The Return

I have managed to hack back into this thing.

"What is life? What is death? If you cut out the heart of a dogfish and drop it into a bucket of warm saline, the heart will continue to beat for up to eight hours. Is that life? Or is it merely "technical life" or "virtual death"? Not long ago, some fossilized lotus seeds known to be thousands of years old were dug from a bog in Manchuria. A botanist chipped away the rocklike outer shell, incubated the seeds in damp cotton wadding. In time, delicate green shoots appeared. He set them out upon a lake. Behold! The lotus bloomed. Time was when one could say with King Lear as he cradled the body of Cordelia: "I know when one is living and when one is not." With the advent of medical technology, that distinction has become blurred."--Dr. Richard Selzer