The Medical Misunderstanding

A poem tracing a line from a weeping child to the modern doctor, where medicine becomes spectacle and the healer is sold as a locust amid billions of manufactured antennae transmitting pathological stars.

A dense indictment of the modern healer that opens in childhood time - 'From the days that wept the child / The child will not weep the days' - and moves toward a figure who has lost his humanity to his function. 'A new wild man sulks through the skies for disease,' and though his search 'can not be bothered by paranoia,' he is 'sold as a locust / By billions of manufactured antennae / Transmitting a showcase of pathological stars.' The doctor becomes 'A ghost in the flesh across the grave with tools' who 'has taken his sur name off a list in his memory / To be taken for granted against the absurd / When announced as the Doctor on duty.' The misunderstanding is structural: the same 'ancient winds' that 'transformed knowledge into hands' now feed an apparatus that broadcasts and commodifies the healer until he must erase his own name to perform the role.