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.

Ten lines that yoke opposites: 'Even as the surgeons at the gurney / Even as the hell raiser / is there as well', healer and wrecker are 'Both formed by their dedication / to twist the opposite / in outrageous task'. The poem concludes that neither 'need go beyond / the truth of hurt, / and self annoited / lives of trouble'.

The title word 'even' is the hinge, used to level rather than to contrast - the surgeon at the gurney and the 'hell raiser' are set side by side as equivalents, each defined by 'dedication' to 'twist the opposite / in outrageous task'. The poem withholds moral ranking: both figures are bound to 'the truth of hurt' and to 'self annoited / lives of trouble', as if commitment of any kind, healing or harming, draws from the same severe well. The misspelling 'annoited' (for anointed) quietly fuses self-appointment with a botched sacrament, sharpening the irony that both vocations consecrate themselves. Compressed and unsentimental, the poem refuses to elaborate or to praise, ending on trouble rather than resolution. Keep 'annoited' verbatim.