The dead live then
And the living die
The young are raised by cold machines
Doctors wired to save lives
By any method, by all means
Wounds healed, disease destroyed
Souls depart and enter the void
They pray for results, they pray for a fix
Life and death in a deadly mix
Note From Editor
This is an unusual subject choice; I think that the poet has ‘made the familiar strange’ in a very arresting way here. Using an almost incantatory rhythm and rhyme scheme he casts a spell on the scene so that a place we all know very well – hospital – becomes imbued with foreboding and a kind of nightmarish tension. His tight sentences and quartets seem to trap us in the shadowy setting, and his constant juxtaposition of images of life and death (both equally unsettling) give this poem a haunting tone worthy of the famous author of ‘The Raven’, Edgar Allan Poe.