poem to a physician

I cannot contain you: nor you contain the world,
I cannot cup your wisdom and your heart's desire
For service to mankind in one brief poem alone:
In spirit you are Hercules, your service is the fire
That licks the creeping vines of dark disease.
In nervous moments your smile and easy charm
Are as the music-lyre that drowns a patient's
Desperation and make him warmly wish and throb
For life again. You know the aching bone or the
Rheumatic heart is not of flesh alone:
Far beyond man's eager comprehension is the Power
Unknown.

Hail to you: the Sweet Physician of Hippocrates
Disease falters and death trembles where you tread.
In our too eager world that saturates with gain,
Be a tempered apostle for all mankind!

I sing of him who loves both common man and king,
On this dark earth of men on ivory towers:
Physician, arise, let not complacency destroy
Your age-worn creed, reset your goals, not for
The gold alone:

There still is love where once hate was,
A precious ruby sleeps within a dark, dark stone!

-P.C. Deza, M.D.