A doctor: for the time’s disease
He knew no cure: though he could ease
This mind’s unrest, that body’s pain.
The makeshift home where he was sane
Housed tranquil dignity, that bore
Sober mistrust for holy war.
The war he died in was not his:
Between two equal enemies
He chose to work withdrawn. But when
Ordered to sacrifice those men –
Patients and friends – who shared his home,
Scorning promiscuous rhetoric,
With chaste formality he spoke:
The abstract words of his defence
Were tempered by experience,
No more: beyond that point he chose
The silence of secure repose.
Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott
The time’s demons had all but quelled
The faith he taught, to which he held
In doubt and hope. So he withdrew
To preach a version of the true:
Exiled within reality
To mediate lost sanctity.
When a Black Death of the spirit broke
Over Europe in blood and smoke
And silence, his truth named as fact
What lucid empiricism lacked
Scope to envisage. A stronghold still
For him, his faith embraced the real.
His speech was action. The long quest
Of Europe’s centuries seems compressed
Behind those words: which yet contain
In their calm voice his insight’s pain;
Which drove hysteria and pride
Beyond the clearing where he died.