Bioethics Poetry, Another Dannie Abse Edition

A DOCTOR’S REGISTER

And yet God has not said a word!

“Porphyria’s Lover,” R. Browning

Half asleep, you recalled a fading list

of girls’ sweet names. Now to old women

these names belong—some whom you tumbled and

     kissed

in summer’s twilit lanes or hidden by heather.

You were a youth who never stayed long

for Gwen or for Joyce, for Rita or Ruth,

and there were others too, on a lower register.

Then, suddenly, a robust, scolding voice

changed your dream’s direction and the weather.

“That much morphia, doctor? Wrong, wrong.”

Surprised to discover your eyes still shut

you wondered which dead patient or what

(whose accusing son and when?) as any

trusted doctor would who did not murder

any pleading one with sovereign impunity.

“I found a thing to do,” said the lover

of Porphyria. Porphyria? Awake you add

the other pretty names too: Anuria,

Filaria, Leukaemia, Melanoma,

Sarcoma, Euthanasia, amen.

Dannie Abse