i. surgery <br /> <br />When they needed a foreign part, <br />a valve which was not to be found <br />or spared elsewhere in his ample, <br />useful body, they chose a pig's valve. <br />This will be compatible, they reasoned, <br />with such pig-headed machinery <br />as has maintained a minor poet <br />for sixty-three years in America. <br /> <br />ii. convalescence <br /> <br />Once a week on Thursday there's a souk <br />or open market in Sale, the old Roman port <br />facing Rabat across the Bou Regreg. <br />At least one dentist always sets up shop too- <br />a table full of gun-metal teeth, formerly human. <br />One day I saw a woman have one pulled, <br />or saw as much as a queasy heart could watch. <br />The chirurgien dentiste was a small man, <br />authoritative, Berber I think. <br />His left foot was set gently on the woman's <br />shoulder, and when I last looked, <br />difficult, silent progress was being made. <br />A concept of necessary suffering, praise Allah, <br />is common to all civilizations. <br /> <br />Soon I will need to imagine again <br />what she is feeling, but for a few more days <br />that will not be necessary, a sensation <br />my body was to fastidious to wait for <br />hovers inside me. Even mortality <br />is briefly imaginable, like pain. <br />Arab Sister, in your dark robed dignity, <br />May we both be healed of our cures and live <br />painlessly forever, as our bodies urge.<br /><br />William Morris Meredith Jr.<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/partial-accounts/
