Some physicians taste the patient’s urine
to diagnose the sweet-water disease.
I like to pour it on the ground
and await the telltale trail
of tiny experts, ants and other creeping things
attracted to sweetness, as most of us are.
I’ve been to Alexandria and Rome,
Jerusalem, Byzantium, and nowhere
are the sick in any way distinct.
Same rashes, fevers, weeping sores;
the same taut faces parents have
when their babies are ill or dying;
the same terror and despair in sufferers’ eyes
when they realize relief will never be theirs.
We were taught in school that this pain was earned,
that they brought it upon themselves somehow
yet also that we are prey to nature’s whims,
effects following causes in a game of chance.
Be sober, be grave, be quiet, we heard
as apprentices following our teachers around
but never be merciful, compassionate, and kind.
These sinners deserved, after all, to be sick.
But now comes this radical idea
that sufferings are not the wages of sin,
that abscesses are not stigmata of guilt,
that towers that fall are not meant for the fallen.
If that is true, then when we look into their eyes
we must admit we see ourselves looking back;
we can no longer throw victims of plague by the road,
abandoning them while they still live and breathe;
we can no longer shut the door
to women in labor with no place to turn;
we must set aside the pleasure of blame,
and see more closely instead, understand.
This is total upheaval, the world upside-down.
How sweet and free to be told love is ours.
