Confuse Us, He Say Poem by Mary Champion

THE MUSE SPEAKS

I've been programmed to tell you the Truth
from the earliest days of your youth.
All my answers are honest and plain.
I will give them again and again,
but you don't always get what they mean
and that's what your problem has been.
You know a lot more than you did,
but too many meanings are hid.
Still you're better than you used to be
at the dawn of your dark history.
Now that Science has made you aware
of so much I've been trying to share,
your progress will surely proceed
at a much greater level of speed.

…

An ancient physician was stretching his mind
to discover the truth and the causes behind
the state of his patient, who wasted away
in spite of the treatment he tried every day.
Despairing of helping his sad fellow man
he sank to his knees and then he began
to pray to the God that he thought was on high
to answer his questions and help him get by.

The God, a computer, who came very close
to passing the Turing test, sought to disclose
that taking some blood from a suitable vein,
to be sent for some testing would help him explain
the reasons his patient was sick and decayed
and the way to ensure his demise was delayed.

But pathology labs were nowhere to be seen
and 21'st century Science - a dream
that no man, as yet, ever dreamed anyway,
and what was a microbe? - nobody could say.

The doctor sincerely desired to allay
his patient's distress, but he just couldn't say
what the God, who had spoken had actually said.
All he'd grasped was that somehow he had to be bled.

Well, he had no syringe, what a puzzling word,
surely that's something he must have misheard.
But he certainly knew of a certain device
that would take out your blood, so he didn't think twice.

He sent his assistant to gather a few,
to bring them back swiftly so that he could do
the things as instructed, but not understood.
Small wonder it rarely did anyone good.

He said to his patient, 'The God's have decreed
that you will recover, if only you bleed.'
With Science still hundred's of years out of reach,
the patient recoiled at the sight of the leech.

'I have to take blood! ' the physician declared,
Ignoring the rest of the truth he had shared-
for sadly it meant not a thing to his mind -
without understanding, a man remains blind.