I peer out of my window on a windswept night:
paramedics in green lead the ex-surgeon
back to the neon land of hospitals
perhaps where he imperiously strolled like a god
but he's transmuted into a frightened child
for this mind disease is terribly cruel,
incurable, a cancer of the soul
until the poor victim has no control.
We played chess but the rules now
would be unfathomable as an obscure tongue,
his check-mate days lost to the past
and the life-saving hands, once so steady,
shake like the leaves in the midnight air.
The engine is switched on, the ambulance rolls,
I retreat to my bed with sadness inside
for the elegant man I knew...has died.
paramedics in green lead the ex-surgeon
back to the neon land of hospitals
perhaps where he imperiously strolled like a god
but he's transmuted into a frightened child
for this mind disease is terribly cruel,
incurable, a cancer of the soul
until the poor victim has no control.
We played chess but the rules now
would be unfathomable as an obscure tongue,
his check-mate days lost to the past
and the life-saving hands, once so steady,
shake like the leaves in the midnight air.
The engine is switched on, the ambulance rolls,
I retreat to my bed with sadness inside
for the elegant man I knew...has died.
