A Psychiatrist's Song

I help them out, I help them out,
All those whose exits are in doubt
From the self-extruded spirals
Of their own ingrowing morals—

Those whose paths are set with shadows
And the snakes breed in their meadows
And the thoughtweed binds the gate,
I de-infest their whole estate:

And those whose skiffs capsize at sea
And cannot swim, their legs not free,
But in confusion look to drown,
I] hook them out and rub them down.

Old gentlemen who can’t stop pinching
Whatever bottom looks like flinching,
I teach them how to slow that car
And put a handbrake on desire:

And couples whose sex is in the head
And therefore will not go to bed
From a mistaken sense of sin,
I help them in, I help them in.

A fig for imaginary evils:
I fight against the real devils
Of hashed-up circuits, jammed-down switches
And telegraph poles in the ditches.

These bolt the doors and windows; then
The creeping damps and rots begin,
The worm grows wily in the wall
And down the family portraits fall;

1 am the hero with the axe
Who thrusts the fresh air through the cracks;
I sweep the flues, | scour the drains
And free the gutters to the rains:

While those who stumble in the wide
Without-door tempest, void of pride,
Untrousered, why, I fetch galoshes
And plastic hats, and mackintoshes.

* * *

All their ills away | take:
Then why does my own sore head ache?
Look how the fish leap in the lake!
Then why does my own sore head ache?