Even

A severe poem that sets surgeons and hell-raisers beside one another to ask how dedication can serve either healing or harm.

Its severity comes from its refusal to moralize at length; it just places the figures together and lets the tension hold.

The word 'even' does all the work: surgeons and hell-raisers are placed not in opposition but in equivalence, both present at the gurney, both dedicated. The poem does not moralize about the difference between healing and destruction — it simply notes that both require the same intensity of commitment.

The poem's formal severity (three short lines, no elaboration) mirrors the ethical austerity it describes. In a world where dedication serves both good and harm equally, there is nothing left to say.