A poem by Hyam Plutzik (United States, 1911-1962)
“I am a sixty-seven year old, retired professor of electrical engineering at the University of Rochester. Hyam Plutzik was the Deane Professor of Rhetoric and Poetry when he died of cancer in 1962 at the age of fifty. I joined the university in 1967, so I never knew Plutzik. As a cancer survivor myself, I regret the life cut short. The poem is vivid and powerful in its description of cancer, in the metaphor of the bursting nova, in the way the victim is presented.”
-Sidney Shapiro, 67, Retired Engineering Professor, Rochester, New York
…
The star exploding in the body;
The creeping thing, growing in the brain or the bone;
The hectic cannibal, the obscene mouth.
…
The mouths along the meridian sought him,
Soft as moths, many a moon and sun,
Until one
In a pale fleeting dream caught him.
…
Waking, he did not know himself undone,
Nor walking, smiling, reading that the news was good,
The star exploding in his blood.
…
(Acknowledgement: Both this poem and the quotation are taken from pg. 219 in “Americans’ Favorite Poems: The Favorite Poem Project Anthology”, edited by Robert Pinsky and Maggie Dietz.)
The Rose 