End Notes
Rondeau on Grief
By Jack Coulehan, M.D.
Get rid of grief. Its appetite won’t save
a single golden moment, or bathe
the stinking corpse you’re stuck with. Death won’t play
according to your script. There is no way—
no step, no stage, no style to blunt the wave,
no Prozac-laden room, nor empty grave.
It’s close and dumb. Death always misbehaves—
the wrath, the witch’s Mass, dies irae
Get rid of grief.
Grief, the ice-bound coast, the slippery cave,
the twist incision with a blade, it’s what they’ve
called a knot, a mystery—you cannot lay
a boundary to it, nor hinder your decay,
it tears and swallows you, it makes you slave.
Get rid of grief.
Jack Coulehan, M.D., is from Setauket, New York.
This poem originally appeared in the October 22, 2003, issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (2003;290:2100). ©2003 American Medical Association. All rights reserved.