FIRST, DO NO HARM

In Robert Fagles’ translation of Vergil, Aeneas, contemplating the Trojan War cries out, "The world is a world of tears, and the burdens of mortality to touch the heart." Laura Brylawski-Miller intuits the lacrimae rerum, the tears in things throughout her poetry, and it is not only a result of the classic education she received in her native Italy, but a guiding insight that directs her view of the world, the shape of her soul. Like the Buddha of Sokkuram, she is stunned by the suffering she sees in the world and is left with the only possible response, compassion for the human condition. Compassion in her, however, is not naiveté. This intuition is perhaps what first led her to medicine, the sensitivity for the pain of others, the need to heal, even when that healing process means debriding dead tissue with her poetic scalpel. "First, do no harm," the Hippocratic oath demands, but sometimes it requires severe measures as every surgeon knows.