Famous Doctor

The French physician, Guillotine,

proposed its use in eighty-nine

would be humane.

The heavy blade in vertical guides

glides, and then completely divides

the head from its body on the other side.

One is tempted to say ‘neatly’

but that would not be true.

There is blood.

You can catch at least some of it in a pail,

along with the head.

The doctor’s name became a word

which may or may not have deterred

evil, except in the caught wrong-doer,

which sounds like part of the Himalayas

but is not, unless by coincidence.

However you slice it, the doctor is famous,

as France is too, if for other reasons,

liberalism, existentialism, pointillism,

communism, ultra-conservatism, modernism

and a thousand other ways of losing your head,

all of them nicer than Guillotine’s.