Richard M. Berlin, MD

years later, the Jews are enslaved again,

getting down on his knees to kiss Liberty

Island’s earth and thank God for the USA.

Flash forward and “Doc” Emhoff is the first

who fixed my driver’s license road test.

decked out in pinstriped suits and a star

into people’s pockets. Master of the quick

extraction, his power-grip fingers crushed

for his first grandson when he placed a doctor’s bag

in my crib, gave me stone skulls for bookends,

taught me to polish dentures in his cluttered lab,

and let me examine ten thousand pulled teeth

he kept in a stack of drawers, the proudest man

at my med school graduation, this immigrant

who spent his life looking into America’s mouth,

the stains and decay, bridges and crowns, the jolt

of his booming voice commanding every citizen

to smile, bite down, grind, and open wide,

the way America’s jaws had opened for him.

is Instructor in Psychiatry, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, MA. 

Articles

Grandpa Murray, rags to riches, American big shot, the man who dreamt even bigger for his first grandson when he placed a doctor’s bag in my crib . . . the proudest man
at my med school graduation.

Immigrant

Drama for the day, the telephone rings, spring blossoms, senior year is sad, Mother Earth takes revenge, praying for Sully to land us on the Hudson-these are some of the phrases in a collection of 

Haikus assembled by the Orange County Museum of Art

Dr Berlin is Instructor in Psychiatry - University of Massachusetts Medical School. He has been "Poetry of the 

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Drama for the day, the telephone rings, spring blossoms, senior year is sad, Mother Earth takes revenge, praying for Sully to land us on the Hudson . . .

Coughs That Echo Across the World

Dr Berlin offers salve to the soul with a recitation of "Let Evening Come," by Jane Kenyon, and then some.

Let the light of late afternoon
	shine through chinks in the barn, moving  
	up the bales as the sun moves down.

Let the cricket take up chafing  
	as a woman takes up her needles  
	and her yarn. Let evening come.

Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned  
	in long grass. Let the stars appear
	and the moon disclose her silver horn.

Let the fox go back to its sandy den.  
	Let the wind die down. Let the shed  
	go black inside. Let evening come.

To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop  
	in the oats, to air in the lung  
	let evening come.

Let it come, as it will, and don’t  
	be afraid. God does not leave us  
	comfortless, so let evening come.

Let Evening Come: An Invocation

One of William Carlos Williams's (1883-1936) best known poems is "

." I thought it was right on target for COVID-19, with its first line, "By the the road to the contagious hospital." It also contains one of his most famous lines where he refers to spring as a "new world naked."

At the time Williams wrote the poem, diseases like polio, measles whooping cough, diphtheria circulated, but not AIDs or 

When the AIDS epidemic was at its peak. I wrote my own version of Spring and All, in which I speak directly to Williams, and so I tried to capture his voice.

When the AIDS epidemic was at its peak, Dr Berlin wrote his own version of "Spring and All," in which he speaks directly to the original author, Wayne Carlos Williams. There are parallels to coronavirus in these works.

The Road Home From the Hospital

I am a doctor and a poet in private practice in psychiatry in the Berkshires Hills of Western Massachusetts. I am also a faculty member of the University of Massachusetts Medical School. I've been writing a poem about my experience of being a doctor every month for the past 23 years in 

In this series of recitations, I will present a poetry with special meaning for all of us, as we cope with the COVID-19 crisis. I would like to continue the theme of praising our nursing colleagues and Dorianne Laux's poem 

I remember the first time I read her poetry and I was just stunned by her gift for clarity and language and detailed observations that she brings to her work in this poem. And also, since we're close to Mother's Day, this poem is also a great tribute to all our hard working mothers.

My mother went to work each day
	in a starched white dress, shoes
	clamped to her feet like pale
	mushrooms, two blue hearts pressed
	into the sponge rubber soles.
	When she came back home, her nylons
	streaked with runs, a spatter
	of blood across her bodice,
	she sat at one end of the dinner table
	and let us kids serve the spaghetti, sprinkle
	the parmesan, cut the buttered loaf.
	We poured black wine into the bell
	of her glass as she unfastened
	her burgundy hair, shook her head, and began.
	And over the years we mastered it, how to listen
	to stories of blocked intestines
	while we twirled the pasta, of saws
	teething cranium, drills boring holes in bone
	as we crunched the crust of our sourdough,
	carved the stems off our cauliflower.
	We learned the importance of balance,
	how an operation depends on
	cooperation and a blend of skills,
	the art of passing the salt
	before it is asked for.
	She taught us well, so that when Mary Ellen
	ran the iron over her arm, no one wasted
	a moment: My brother headed straight for the ice.
	Our little sister uncapped the salve.
	And I dialed the number under Ambulance,
	my stomach turning to the smell
	of singed skin, already planning the evening
	meal, the raw fish thawing in its wrapper,
	a perfect wedge of flesh.

In this series of recitations, Dr Richard Berlin will present a poetry with special meaning for all of us, as we cope with the COVID-19 crisis. He continues the theme of praising our nursing colleagues with Dorianne Laux's poem "Nurse."

The Nurses in Our Lives

-at the first performance of Beethoven’s
	9th symphony, Vienna, May 7, 1824

An under-rehearsed opening night orchestra,
	the largest ever assembled, their eyes anchored
	on Maestro Louis Duport who keeps time
	standing off stage, the audience locked on
	Beethoven who owns the spotlight
	even as he falls a few measures behind.
	Newspapers report the composer conducted
	

 crouching, extending
	to full height, throwing himself back and forth,
	hands flailing as if playing every instrument,
	singing for minutes after the music stopped,
	silenced only when contralto Karoline Unger
	turned him to face a hat and handkerchief
	waving crowd for five standing ovations.

Almost two hundred years later
	I’m on my feet for the symphony’s zillionth
	set of 

 a lingering glow,
	and I imagine myself in each debut character-
	the expert orchestra member who performs
	his job while history forgets his name;
	Louis Duport, owning responsibility,
	sustaining the symphony’s pulse
	the way a doctor conducts a Code Blue;
	and the compassionate Karoline Unger
	nurturing a hearing-impaired old man.
	But I don’t dare imagine myself holding
	Beethoven’s baton, the genius gone mad,
	deaf to criticism, his joy as he conducted,
	all the notes he trusted the orchestra to play
	with the pitch and passion he imagined,
	what he felt in the silent clamor of applause.

is Instructor in Psychiatry, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, MA.

Beethoven’s baton, the genius "gone mad," deaf to criticism, his joy as he conducted, all the notes he trusted the orchestra to play . . .

A Question of Character

I hope that in these difficult times, you are still able to find something to love about being a doctor, nurse, or health care professional. In mid-life, when I began writing poetry, I was strongly influenced by the work of the Pulitzer Prize winning American poet Stephen Dunn. Stephen had written a poem titled 

 that inspired me to write a poem about everything I love about my work as a doctor.

I love my long white coat, belted in back,
	deep pockets filled with tourniquet, tuning fork,
	reflex hammer and pens; the pride of uniform
	grown from short white to long blue and long gray,
	until finally, long white and arrival as Chief,
	each coat earned with tears and blood on my sleeves.
	I love the purity of white,
	as if the great whale’s strength and mystery
	and power surround my body,
	the way each patient, even the most demented,
	recognizes white coat means 

I love the library’s old book smell
	and a new text’s clean gloss,
	the endless flow of journals, data
	that seem so solid before the ground moves
	and grand theories yield to a few humble facts;
	the miracle of the Cloud, Up to Date,
	everything known and unknown
	for longer than I have searched or breathed,
	the infinity of my ignorance.

 choreoathetosis,
	how words shrink to CATS and SPECTS,
	crits and Cipro and adenoCA,
	the illusion: we control by naming.
	And I would love the words even more
	if I did not know their meanings,
	the abbreviated way we dismiss people
	as left hemis, diabetics, schizophrenics,
	my shame for comfort I have stolen
	beneath a word’s cool shadow.

I love a stethoscope draped around my neck
	casual as a towel at poolside,
	my swoon for our tools: Queen’s Square hammer,
	soundings my hands percuss,
	weathermap shadows on ultrasound,
	a cardiogram’s sharp repetition,
	the rolling sea in fathoms of brain waves.
	Yet the tools I love most are my eyes
	that measure in an instant, how sick, how well.

I love a nurse who knows the doses
	and the patient and family’s story,
	moments in crisis we become each other’s hands,
	teamwork that appears sudden as a star.
	I love the banter, the jokes, the sexual charge
	so alive in the constant presence of death.
	And because I am a hatmaker’s son
	I love a nurse’s white winged cap.

I love to pretend I’ve saved a life
	though I know it’s just a postponement
	before pronouncement and suffering’s end
	when I bend, humble and yielding.
	I love the drama, keeping cool in crisis,
	running a Code, giving good advice,
	the way each story shines a beam of humor
	if I can place my mind at a certain angle,
	the laughter that lets me go on.

I love my patients, not as a group, but one by one,
	their varieties of trust below the surface,
	permission to ask about blood and bowel movements,
	lives and loves, how they come with their own yearning
	questions I answer by listening without judgment,
	the miracle that listening is sometimes enough.

I love to come home to my orchard when apples are ripe,
	watch my daughter slice garlic
	and my wife arrange lilies in a vase,
	the vacation surprise that people can eat and pee,
	walk without walkers or an IV pole.
	And I love to take off my white coat, the stethoscope,
	forget the big words and listening’s weight,
	all the sounds and smells and tests
	of this life I have chosen,
	and remember the white and bloodless world I knew
	before I fell in love.

is Instructor in Psychiatry at University of Massachusetts Medical School, and Poetry of the Times columnist

A poem titled Loves by American poet Stephen Dunn inspired me to write a poem about everything I love about my work as a doctor.

The Love for our Work

Why poetry? As the great Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai said, “When words fail, that’s when poetry begins.”

I have had an experience this spring which many of you have probably shared: walking outside, and feeling the natural world spin on without concern for our human predicament. In his beautiful poem “

” Ron Pies captures one of those moments. Among his many titles Ron is Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Tufts University School of Medicine; and Editor in Chief Emeritus of 

 He is also a brilliant philosopher, ethicist, Jewish scholar, poet and writer.

Slipping out of quarantine,
	we walk hand in hand
	by Dunback Meadow
	into the nurturance
	of pine grove
	and Spring’s migrant birds:
	warblers, kinglets, and vireos,
	sweetly oblivious of virus
	or the cold loneliness
	of the solitary old.
	Just past Clematis Brook,
	we see a lone goose,
	her belly pressed
	against dun meadow grass.
	Silent, still, bereft of mate,
	she takes no notice.
	But in the viral possibilities
	that weigh upon us,
	we take solemn note
	of her.

is Instructor in Psychiatry at University of Massachusetts Medical School, and Poetry of the Times columnist.

Silent and Solemn Spring 

Richard M. Berlin, MD, Instructor in Psychiatry at University of Massachusetts Medical School, and Poetry of the Times columnist, writes, "Nurses are on the front line in the care of COVID-19 patients, and for many years I have admired and resonated with the poetry of nurse practitioner Cortney Davis who is also a memoirist, and creative non-fiction writer. I think you will appreciate these two short poems."

where it’s okay
	to climb into bed with patients
	and hold them-
	pre-op, before they lose
	their legs or breasts, or after,
	to tell them
	they are still whole.

Or post-partum,
	when they have just returned
	from that strange garden,
	or when they are dying,
	as if somehow because I stay
	they are free to go.

I want the daylight
	I walk out into
	to become the flashlight they carry,
	waving it as we go together
	into their long night.

And this is a poem to remember when you put on your next pair of exam gloves…

I wear latex gloves
	to keep patients’ germs away-
	staph, herpes, HIV-every viral song,
	each bacterial worry.

Accustomed to such risky love,
	I rummage drawers at home
	to unearth warmer gloves:
	blue calfskin, the silky buttoned bone

or ivory elbow length I found
	in Mother’s coat, now my own.
	Are we bound
	to work, age, sicken, die

alone-not skin to skin?
	How can it be?  I, who can’t remember
	Mother’s hugs, find my fingers in-
	side Mother’s gloves.

Nurses are on the front line in the care of COVID-19 patients, and for many years Dr Berlin has admired and resonated with the poetry of nurse practitioner Cortney Davis. Here: a recitation of two of her poems.

Honoring Our Nurses

Richard Berlin, MD, recites "COVID-19," written by Dr Chris Fitzpatrick, a senior obstetrician-gynecologist at Coombe Hospital in Dublin, Ireland. "COVID-19" is a series of haikus strung together to highlight the many moments in hospitals that are happening everywhere in the world.

In the poem’s powerful ending, Dr Fitzpatrick refers to a line by the Nobel Prize winning poet Seamus Heaney: “Believe that a further shore is reachable from here.”

Day shift now
	a midwife puts on PPE
	a baby cries just the same

Big signs everywhere
	In yellow: COVID-19
	No visitors allowed

Make rounds, discharges home
	Afternoon phone-call clinic
	Read algorithms

Login on laptop
	National webinar
	A thousand doctors

Watch live TV
	Getting closer to the surge
	Flatten the curve, now

Wash hands, cough
	In a tissue or sleeve,
	Keep apart, stay at home

The prime minister
	Is our Sully who’s worked out
	Where the Hudson River is

PPEs airborne
	Battles fought in ICUs
	The world over

Phone my mam and dad
	Cocooned and praying hard
	For all those without a mass to attend

I think of Heaney:
	Believe a further shore
	Is reachable
	It is

has been writing a poem about his experience of being a doctor every month for the past 23 years in 

 in a column called "Poetry of the Times." He is Instructor in Psychiatry, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, MA.

Richard Berlin, MD, recites "COVID-19," by Dr Chris Fitzpatrick. It is a series of haikus strung together to highlight the many moments in hospitals that are happening everywhere in the world. This. Very. Moment.

Author | Richard M. Berlin, MD