Why Did You Become a Doctor?

I originally wanted to be a witch Sitting inside a Leiden jar In the pathology museum Or manifesting suddenly in a wardrobe Or a trick of the light in a motorway café.

My fallback application Was to become one of those nuns in La Dolce Vita In an enormous starched wimple Like the collar of Phillip II As if my head was something that had fallen into a serviette.

I wanted to be Dr Zhivago And have a Russian mistress on a sledge.

There are no crosswords in heaven Because there is no tomorrow for the answer.

Later, psychiatry took my fancy. I wanted to rescue an enchanted mad princess From a tower in a wood Where the senior registrar was making curry.

I hoped to meet some brilliant eccentric Cataloguing shadows, or decanting clouds like Harpic Into old sherry bottles.

The works of Freud were like a prolonged Businessman's lunch in a German restaurant Where the waiters have aprons that reach down to their ankles And there is only one course on the menu but it is very good.

I was looking for an Irish country hour, Grade II listed, Set in parkland, where the Medical Director Organised an annual rough shooting party For the staff to take potshots at each other From behind hayricks While inside the building huge women sat in stone circles And we taunted them like boys taunting a dolmen. Or the Persian king whipping the sea.

Sitting in the water tower on night duty Waiting for the arrival of the princess I found further philosophers plied their antique charms.

Minswanger, Glogg, Jaspers, Kleist, Heidegger, Snoek Opened their swing doors to me Like bistros in Charlotte Street with irresistible names.

And I would conjure with their smoky names Savouring their names like baroque Italian ice creams Or like a harpsichordist Who slowly releases his fingers from the keys And looks up at the candlelit ceiling As if the music were someone he had left behind.

This poem is from The Hippocates Prize 2010: The Winning and Commended Poems, published by The Edge Press.

Chosen by Femi Oyebode.