Mystery
The priests
in their white coats
broach the inner sanctum,
the holiest of holies
of the human heart
sacrifices blemished
with sutures, the yellow
wash of antiseptic.
Contact with the mystery
pumping through us
changes them
in ways the rest of us
(even the shepherds)
can’t understand.
How can we know
when it’s time
to tug on the thread
and reel them back
to the tiled corridors
we nightly walk?
Written by Rachel Barenblat, author of chaplainbook.
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Qarrtsiluni (2005-2013) was a groundbreaking online literary magazine, one of the first to fully exploit blog software. Though we never quite realized our dream of creating a print-on-demand option for each issue, being online does mean that our back issues remain accessible indefinitely, so there's that. And we published some damn fine stuff — check it out.
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Beautiful, Rachel!
Thank you, Peter! I’m so glad you like it.
I’m back reading it for the third time. The question it ends with is difficult to parse, in a very satisfying way. Exactly who’s reeling and what’s being reeled in is difficult to say — doctor or shepherd? Patient or heart? I can easily make it mean any of the four permutations of those, and what it means each time shifts — but less than you might expect.
As Peter said — it’s beautiful.
I’ve had the same sort of response as Peter and Dale. The poem itself expresses mystery via mystery. Elegantly.
The simplicity of the metaphor and how it perfectly works is stunning every time I’ve come back to read this poem. Dale’s right, it’s either, both, and as your title indicates, perhaps the mystery of healing itself. The care of the other, their heart, their trust, their lovingness, paramount. But knowing when, oh what a question, what a responsibility!