I doubt that the weary-eyed woman
behind the hospital desk
thinks of you, Basil the Great,
as she files those x-rays
of breaks and splintered bone
all those disasters under flesh.
If she asked you to reveal
the mystery of a cloud
around the heart,
would you oblige?
At home, she dreams
that none of these diagnoses
are real. The children go home,
the grandfathers wake up,
and the cancer slips away
like a ribbon at the beach.
This gets her through the night.
Would you say that
she is simply an interpreter
who explains visions in sleep
to make them serve her own end?
Doctor of the Church,
if only she was sleeping,
if only these graphs and charts
told something other than the truth.
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