I like to stroll the graveyard in the middle of town
With my friend Anne, though we seldom agree
On what an epitaph we happen to read implies.
I’m inclined to find the one-line gravestone,
Dr. Noah Vedder, M.D., as sadly comic.
If we can’t take our money into the dark,
I read it as saying, at least we can take our titles.
But Anne, whose sympathies are aroused
More quickly than mine, reads it more darkly
As confessional. Here is the man’s admission
That he saw himself as a better doctor
Than he was a friend, or father, or husband,
A better listener in his office than at home.
If his kin were responsible for the inscription,
Its terseness, I say, may suggest they were moved
More by duty than they were by love.
But for her, its terseness seems to imply
Their painful acknowledgment that no praise
Inscribed on the stone would keep their friend
From being forgotten soon after they would be.
And behind this truth she hears a protest:
If the world were fair, he wouldn’t be sentenced
To endless retirement but allowed to practice,
In a life beyond this one, the profession he loved.
What use would a doctor be, I ask, in a realm
Where bodies are laid aside? But for her the point is
That those who knew him were certain that if
Such a realm existed and a doctor were called for there,
He’d volunteer, glad to hold office hours
And glad after hours to visit patients
Too sick to leave home,
However modest the streets they lived on,
However winding and poorly lit.