Saturday, August 28, 2010


ON BACH’S CELLO SUITE NO. 2 IN D MINOR

Prelude

Lacking the violin’s higher reasoning,
its closeness to the mind, the cello
without touching, knows the lower body
best, the shame and glory of the belly,
the bowels, the inner thighs,
the sweat and stain of things, holy and otherwise,
—this, the cello’s music, the dark vibratos,
the pitch and muscle of their sounds.

Lorna Crozier


On Monday, August 30, early, I will see the urologist Doctor Ercole Leone at his office on Burrard. I will arrive an hour early (and he will see me early). I will sit in the waiting room for a short time, time enough, to read one poem in the Spring 2010 edition of the Malahat Review. I will read the poem by Lorna Crozier and realize that of all the poems that anybody would read in preparation for a urologist, none could be better or more succinct to the situation.

After a complete examination (I repeat, complete) Doctor Leone will confirm my family doctor's, Colin Horricks, opinion that if I die it will not be of prostate cancer since I have a most healthy one. I will include here a picture of another gentleman who did not die of prostate cancer. He happened to play the cello.