Now He's Just a Wrapper

Inspired by "Annals of Surgery (Heart transplant)", The New Yorker for February 19, 1990; quotations are from tht article: Ever-so-skillfully, t hey Gave him something special, Something he needed to survive. They called it "a heart" and Did a thing they called "a transplant." But they, wise and skillful as they were, Didn't really understand: They didn't put a heart in him, They wrapped him around a heart. "They tel you It doesn't make any difference What kind of heart you get...." It beats now and drags his life forward But he, wrapped around it, Doesn't have the same self any more and Wonders who-and-what he has become. "Everybody tells me What a perfect heart I got...." Sometimes he goes crazy: "Her husband occasionallyy Seems to go into a trance, Sometimes for Hours at a time..." As his Mindless Heart thinks for him. "He seems to be Thinking about Nothing...but his mind Is trying to Escape..." White? Black? Male? Female? "Well, you know..." He says, But he's dead wrong. We don't know, and He'll never know Whence Whose Heart came, and He'll never again be at home in His Own Body, which is now No longer his. He'll never know if this-his-new heart is Part of a dear friend "Why did he die and not me?" Or a hated enemy "Rip that thing out of me!" He'll never know "...whether it was Black or not... Those people have Different Stuff in their body..." But now that Different Stuff Has him. He llives now one beat at a time -- As we all do -- but He-and-it live a different kind of life. He's not a man any more. He's just a Heart-wrapping, Eating and breathing to keep The unknown heart of an Unknown stranger Alive.