Packed neatly in a portable case,
fitting to the red felt's embrace,
made in Edinburgh 1788, these blades
of razored steel and heavy hafts,
handles of mahogany. The drills
to trepan coil like ballerinas;
forcipate tongs twist left or right,
and the saws, teeth sharp as the tock
of a metronome, medium and small,
(none large, for we are not sows,
nor hearth-logs, nor mason's stone)
reflect in the casket's fluorescent glare
needles to suture, pins to puncture.

Such care cutting human flesh,
boring through bone and amputation -
like all instruments to sever and cure
they come clean; so cool, so perfect,
so precise they put our shoddy lives
to shame. A surgeon is the cleverest man:
impresario, benefactor extra-ordinaire, 
always placing others before himself.