He can live forever in the persistent but euphemistic vegetative state
Death does not come easily to the ailing brain,
Traumatic disturbance of the spine kills feeling, but not life,
Cirrhosis takes years to wither the final stages of gin
Loss of hearing and vision inconvenience but do not fatally maim
But missing a single heartbeat is the beginning of the end, a quick ending of life
That degenerate brain keeps the heart alive
Often giving perverse succour where it is no longer respected
You have to mend a broken heart quickly
Since it strokes the genius and then the life out of the white matter above,
A mass of muscle, a bundle of nerves,
Shimmering, pulsating, the essence of life,
Architectural similes, of arches, atria, portals and septa
Activities fundamental for living, rhythm, pulse, beat,
Its deficiencies initiate the decline, dissent and incipient death,
Murmur, attack, occlusion, clot,
The adjectives and nouns of the incompetent and dying
A heart, broken, forever denied the power of recovery
The epitome of irrecoverable traumatic decline
Heart-wrenching, tearing, stopping phenomena,
No soothing words, no emollient of help.
Why has God ordained it thus, that the
Incompetent and incontinent live forever
But the transient infarct in the life and soul of the party
Kills both instantly?
Can this change, can the glue be found to mend the broken heart?
Not the machine to replace it; that is no answer,
A technical chance for the few, to be sure, but
Of no affordable value to the hearts of the many.
No, the death of the heart, which brings death to the soul, starts with the death of
some cells,
The primordial cells of the pulsating beat
Can we bring them back to life, can we regenerate
The few, can we persuade the body
To heal itself, in that moment of time,
In that deliciously delicate of all places,
Through that molecular glue of cellule souche?
Of course we can,
With care, humility, and no heroics.
Franschhoek, South Africa, February 2005
