Poems for Mentors
Mentor
"…I am part of all that I have met;
Yet, all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untraveled world whose margin fades
Forever and forever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!"
Alfred Lord Tennyson
Ulysses, 1842
In Reading Poems, Oxford University Press, 1941, p.248
i.
They number hundreds of thousands, his words;
Arranged in manuscripts;
Theses, hypotheses;
Truths,
Nestled between the long shadows of science
And the tall pillars of scientists;
Searching to unravel the paradox
Of chaos from the order which is life.
ii.
They number hundreds, his students;
Children of his intellect;
Beneficiaries of his passion,
So vital that its privilege
Is not of teacher, but of Mentor;
With wisdom to be guide and
Faithful counselor
As he feeds the fires of their aspirations,
And the fragments of their dreams,
Each a child itself,
Longing to grow and understand
And conquer the haunting
We call disease,
The maladies of illness.
iii.
And they number twenty-two, our years together;
Father to his students,
Father to his children,
Grandfather to his greatest joys;
We celebrate [tonight] our
Privilege of being his colleague
And share in his transition from leader to
Forefather
Of what remains to be discovered,
As our Mentor pursues
Those fortunes of medicine
Which as the ancient's decried:
'Will vanquish misery
And grievous disease.'
Scholar
He, the doctor;
plays the theatres of maladies,
thrusts deep into
entwined complexities
of life's forces which
penetrate nearly to death...
and to death,
while spectator-less
scenes amass of wretched disease,
spurning wrath of reason,
and frames of frozen helplessness,
turn towards thresholds of despair...
but not crossing.
The healer;
lusts against disease,
at his rostrum his faculty
to gift preservation,
to imagine suffering
and bring imaginable defeat;
to lift endless torment
with gentle hands of dignity;
to gaze at pain but see life;
to ponder its wonderment
and ironies, peel away its injustice,
and unearth the marbled core of its soul;
to smile, to cry, and now to pause.
The scholar;
who unaccustomed to
senescence, though lighter now
of visible labour, will remain
to till our minds with wisdom and
leave in its furrows, the very families
of humanity he served and bettered;
a shining light, arousing and inspiring,
a never-exhausting actor who compels
an operating theatre of great drama,
of untiring hope…
and amidst the extremes of misery,
of indefatigable compassion,
for it is he who defines
"physician".
Courage
A Eulogy
"Until the day of his death,
no man can be sure of his courage"
Jean Anouilh, Becket
He was a being in search of his destiny,
And with abundant virtues and dignities,
He filled his days with endeavors of selfless devotion.
A sage with a love for mankind,
He cared for the needy with reverence.
Though the sorrow we feel is deep,
We must not share in his suffering, but
Triumph over his death by committing our
Hearts, our bosoms, and our most visceral spirits
To profound purpose.
Yes, stand tall, thy men of courage,
For a leader amongst us has fallen.
With gallant humanism, and valiant resolve,
He leaves Our mortal plains and hills of despair
To ascend his mountain peaks of glory.
With his inspirations of vitality and hope,
Everything was beautiful and good.
We lament his short life, yet find comfort that
His mortal being was but "a fleeting gleam"
Between two eternity's of tranquil salvation;
Be comforted; for now, His soul is at rest,
Cradled in peace.
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