by Robert Pinsky
Felicity the healer isn’t young
And you don’t look him up unless you need him. Clown’s eyes. Pope’s
nose, a mouth for dirty stories, He made his bundle in the Great
Depression
And now, a jovial immigrant success
In baggy pinstripes, he winks and wheezes gossip, Village stories that
could lift your hair Or lance a boil; the small town dirt, the dope,
The fishy deals and incestuous combinations, The husband and the wife
of his wife’s brother, The hospital contract, the certificate ...
A realist and hardy omnivore,
He strolls the jetties when the month is right
With a knife and lemons in his pocket, after Live mussels from among
the smelly rocks, Preventative of impotence and goitre.
And as though the sight of tissue healing crooked Pleased him, like
the ocean’s vaginal taste, He’ll stitch your thumb up so it shows for life.
And where he once was the only quack in town
We all have heard his half-lame joke, the one About the operation that
succeeded, The tangy line that keeps that clever eye So merry in the
punchinello face.
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