Heal Thyself O Patient - III

What else but weight endless for devil’s due? And I’d need a few more tests to be sure, Grimace or grin, but I ought to endure, What greater devil was seemed like dawn’s dew: Was it ailment or treatment of elbow? Grey visions of an endless dark tunnel Flashed in my mind, as dark and numbing dull, More than pain, unknown fear churned in my maw. Take a course of routine tabs to start with, Your elbow’s whilst under my careful brow, He said as tinkered it like a blacksmith, As if pregnant, pain and swelling did grow, An unknown growth grew within like close kith, The treatment tottered for long to and fro. And my mood too, back and forth, to and fro, Its spectrum, violet to infra-red, Let’s aspirate the fluid, at last he said, If fluid is flushed, hope blister too would go. My skin dulled, he sucked all the liquid out And felt as if Everest looked dwarf in view, But both were back in days less than a few— The pain and swelling too with all their clout. As I lived normal life as did before, Pain was to me but tiny irritant, If only I’d never seen this doctor’s door, What if I leave him this very moment? Whatso was wrong is confined to its core In a small cell-like cyst and all but spent. _______________________________________ Crown of sonnets | 03.11.2012, revised July 2023| Poet’s note: Here are sonnets V and VI of a sequel of ten sonnets constituting one single poem called a crown of sonnets. The last line of the preceding sonnet is repeated as the first line of the next sonnet, but not verbatim; nor is the first line of the first sonnet is repeated as the last line of the tenth as is. The sestets are either a quartet and a couplet or two sets of three-lined Terza Rima. Hurt is the place from where light enters, and it did, I realized after my long-drawn medical treatment.