Elephant Man

An ode to John Carey Merrick

 

What miserable thing hath my eyes pricked?

What cruel treachery hath God performed

On the thing named John Merrick?

To what immortal plan hath he conformed?

He hath been played a cruel trick of nature;

The slave to divine whim

Every perversion and contortion of stature

Is manifested in him.

 

Another trick, crueler still:

The hand the God perfected,

But not enough to cure or heal

The body that beauty neglected.

It hung like a whispery, wanton phantom,

A ghost of ill-conceived fate,

Amidst the horrid bedlam

Of what Beauty says to hate.

 

Even more then, Fate hath inflicted

Him with a mind and sure as Gibralter,

So that reality could not be evicted

And his pain could never falter

In imbecility he could find comfort

In lunacy he could find balance

The mirror it could distort

And set between the mind and body

An insurpassable distance.

 

Once more, a treacherous trick

The Fates hath conspired to perform

On our friend, John Merrick:

A thing in mockery born.

It was their cruelest feat.

They took his hideous form

And gave it the heart of an aesthete.

Author's Note

All comments and critiques gladly welcome

Reviews

[Whispering Aspen]

What kind of world would it be, if we could all live in it without our eyes. What a wonderfully different subject to write about, and yet, then again, perhaps it is not so different. We don't have to have grossly disfigured bodies to be overlooked, mistreated, and shamed by the ignorance of others, now do we? I have no critiques for this poem. Thank you for sharing it.

[April Child]

Life is cruel. You tell it well.

[THE BLACK SEAL]

it hink you pulled this one off quite nicely. I have no real critque of it because i enjoyed the wording and the subject nice job