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Visiting the Surgical Ward
I come festooned with flowers, smiles and grapes,
prepared to play my part, to entertain
and act the fool, a cheery jackanapes
with jokes and japes. I know I must sustain
a jester's role and this facade can't fail
despite the rictus of a monkey grin.
Give me a short red coat that bares my tail
and I will caper like a capuchin
but better that than show the dog behind
my eyes, that blackly hunkers down and whines.
It would attack if only it could find
an enemy to bite. Instead it pines;
for neither simian nor hound can tell
if this goodbye will be our last farewell.
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[center]<table bgcolor=white cellpadding=25 border=0><tr><td>This poet is not afraid to take risks! Several of the ones taken in this poem would have made me gulp and think twice, especially the use of the same vowel sound in six of the octave's eight lines. I was on the fence about that for a while, and then it occurred to me that the poem is about a friend who is willing to risk pratfalls in order to amuse a dying friend. The point is made through so many words and phrases--a kind of repetition that also involves risk--that the reader can't help visualizing this clown, carrying his useless offerings and mouthing his jokes--so incongruous in the hospital setting!--with all those J words.
The biggest risk is practically a visual pratfall. In line 6, he "bares his tail," and then the sestet repeats that imnage--almost--with the "dog behind" that makes a polite turn into "behind my eyes." Bravo! It takes all kinds of assurance, or devotion beyond assurance, to clown around so desperately.
The clowning stops, of course, with the couplet, which is in deadly earnest and takes off the animal masks. I wonder if reversing those two last lines would have added interest, making the couplet less flat-out statement that fearful conjecture: "This goodbye may be our last farewell,/but neither simian nor hound can tell." Or some variant thereof. This is a marvelous poem!
~Rhina
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