Sterile Poem by Thomas Noel Smith

Sterile—it’s so sterile

The air perfumed with alcohol
Surgical smells that linger nigh
Inquisitors who stand erect and tall
And smile at their machines nearby.

Dispassionate faces behind their masks
Piped-in sounds and instruments feud
With ether thoughts and medical tasks
As into bodies they intrude.

Beyond the routine calls of death,
Beyond the worries of the world
Beyond the fears of one last breath
Into a nightmare lives are hurled

The hesitant souls who are confined
To watch the I.V. drip
Remembering the time when they were nine,
When they ran and sang and skipped..

Where are those days from the foggy past
When the lips were rose and the heart was jest?
.
Yesterday’s children who played ‘neath trees.
Now play the games of sterile white
And a watching angel stops and flees
Leaving the souls to face their fright.

And crowns are placed upon the heads
Of those who never see the dead.
The flick of an eye, the sign of a pen
The new destroys the old, all over again.

Sterile—it’s all so sterile