Hospital in the Himalayas

by Ashok Niyogi 
 
Morning has come
To this hamlet in the hills.
They have an internationally funded hospital.

Lady Macbeth, rinse your hands,
You will nurse in the hospital now.
The Companies have this experimental drug
For schizophrenics.
They want guinea pigs—
So go out on a marketing campaign,
Harvest schizophrenics.
Its like picking mushrooms from grassy slopes—
The poison ones to be sifted and chosen,
Only the poison ones.
 
Where better than this unmapped here?
Document the dementia
(They were demented with hunger anyway)
Along with your Indian expert trained in Austria
(Who is incidentally doctoring your bills
Eminent doctor that he is).
 
Frontiers of medicine will be tamed.
Do not count the dead
In this charge of the Light Brigade
Suburban America does not want to know.

© 2005 by Ashok Niyogi. All rights reserved.
Ashok Niyogi was born in Calcutta, India in 1955 and graduated in Economics from Presidency College. He is a retired international trader and now divides time between India, Russia and California where his daughters live. Ashok has been published extensively in magazines and anthologies in the USA, the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. He has two books published from India, Reflections in the Dark and Crossroads, and one paperback volume of poetry from the USA - Tentatively.