To My Father’s Surgeon by Tali Cohen Shabtai


I’ve realised how

it works, it is announced

and it’s known all of a sudden.

 

You know that suddenness has

an action plan that is comprehensive

and detailed –

 

it’s a strategy within itself.

When the suddenness receives

existence in a person’s ears,

 

it is experienced as a malicious trick. Indeed,

it gives no advance warning before taking

action.

 

Did you know that I had to

dismantle this trick

of suddenness

 

of hearts in question marks

under full anaesthesia

and full monitoring

 

in waiting

very exact -.

 

After all, the obvious suddenness

is no longer understood

and has many consequences:

 

it is the realisation 

that we are winning something that we

would not necessarily be entitled to- 

 

my father is on the operating table

at a supervised temperature :

you bypassed the blockage with an

 

additional route

and I could not offer you assurances at this time.

I was in the Traveller’s Prayer and

 

the chorus in the Book of Psalms.

I have approached obsessively every special entity

for any trouble that may come

 

and I was for every letter

of the letters of your name

in Psalms

 

and I searched in those hours for any mention of heredity.

My father has three daughters.

Did you recognize my father in them,

 

when you operated on my father in haste?

And is charity not merely a theological term

for gratitude to be considered?