For Joseph Merrick (1862-1890)
The halls exhale antiseptic venom,
Dull the lemon tiles. Visitors whisper
Rehearsed platitudes to patients
Warring death with menthol
And passages from Genesis.
But in the London Hospital attic
Merrick, a marriage of Man and Elephant,
Eases into the genus of Lilliputian craft.
While gray whorls of British parliament
Debate war with tea and artifice,
He bewitches crepe and toothpicks
Into bipartisan monuments.
An agreeable caucus of paper
And rubber cement. Fragile the trestles,
So delicate the domed archways, yet
Merrick caresses dwarf dimensions
In the bony culverts of his palm.
Soon to be a sideshow superstition,
Bones cataloged and prodded
In folklore and museums,
In Merrick's well-lit overlook
He sits, content to snip
Cellophane into little panes,
Master of this expanding city
Mortaring brick by minute brick.
Downstairs casualties are cut
And malpracticed, cavities
Of sickness nursed or bled,
But here perfection comprising
Miniature stately rooms
Pushes back the gouts,
Starves the cancers,
Consecrates the English noons
Dappled with imperfect mist.
-- Suzanne
Burns