As you heard, I have another life as a physician.
And when I think about my decision to become a doctor,
I realize I was pretty much an unlikely candidate for success
in the medical profession.
And that has to do, I think, with a number
of different identities that I occupy, if you will.
And when I think back to those days of thinking about becoming
a physician and this dream I had of becoming a doc,
I remember first thinking that my faith would
be a kind of problem for me, that I didn't really
see much in the way of a spiritual life
among physicians.
And I thought that might really be difficult for me.
And then, of course, was the fact of my ethnic identity.
And I didn't unfortunately, have many Latino role
models to inspire me to a career in medicine.
And I thought that might pose its own set of obstacles
and barriers to becoming a physician.
And then of course, is the fact that I'm gay.
And I experienced at a pretty young age, homophobia
in doctor's offices, that made me pretty convinced
that would actually perhaps be the largest kind of obstacle
to this dream I had of becoming a physician.
And then as it turned out, when I finally
did get to Harvard Medical School,
it was the fact that I was a poet that was so problematic.
All of these other things that I'd been so worried about,
turned out not to be such a big deal.
But now being a poet, that was really freaky.
And I always tell that story with a sense of irony.
Because honestly, my engagement with language and with poetry
has tremendously enriched my practice of medicine.
And I can't imagine doing one without the other.
And so with that is a little preamble.
I thought I'd read this next poem, which in some ways
I think, locates me in relation to some
of these various identities.
And in the poem you'll see a little bit
of my old neighborhood back in Boston.
So it will perhaps give you a sense of that as well.
This is a poem called "The Failure
of Empathy on Center Street."
"On Center Street, one finds it all--
the art of Africa, a lesbian cafe, the Cuban Puerto Rican
mini-mart, and even past the post office, lilacs
drooped by heavy blooms, their fragrance everywhere.
It spring in Boston in this neighborhood
that has a name part tropical, but skewed Midwest, Jamaica
Plain, which sounds as odd as what I've gathered
in these bags for lunch--
Tostones, sushi, flavor of the day, one scoop from JP Licks,
and a huge bunch of blushing grapes.
So plentiful, yet scarce what one can find on Center Street.
It's all the poor can do to feed themselves
from what I might discard.
A woman in a shawl that looks Peruvian stares hungrily my way
and calls in Spanish with her stoic voice.
She's stationed just beside the lilacs,
holds a clutch of single roses wrapped
in gold fringed cellophane.
The prostitute with AIDS, her name is Gloria, I think.
She asked me for a sandwich once,
some apple juice, ducks quick behind the dumpster,
smoking crack, as plentiful as ever on the street.
One really can get anything right here on Center Street--
AIDS, frozen yogurt, pills, a bunch of seedless grapes,
a can of beer, a rose in cellophane for $0.50.
A homeboy blasting rap outside the bank
is waiting for his test results, perhaps.
The clinic, which is free next door,
still lacks the space for waiting rooms with ambience
more hip and private than the safer sex meets
velveteen of chairs and crowded halls with tacked up posters.
Wondering what's next, I chew my sushi sullenly
and think, what did we see in Center Street.
It's all much older dykes who stay at home and dark
Dominicans and Mexicans who sell whatever
they can get their hands on.
AIDS is their disease these days, not ours.
The men shoot drugs or sleep with prostitutes,
then give it to their wives and kids.
I want to move away from here until this anger fades.
A bus groans by and belching fumes, a vast black comma
punctuation to my irk.
It dissipates as promptly as its past.
And when it's gone I realize it then
that Center Street is anything but one community in isolation.
All of us belong here.
Any could be stunned by positive results,
win lotteries, lose everything because the bank foreclosed.
Impatiently, I count the languages
I overhear, almost convinced the breeze that whistles gently
through the lilacs is the single song that once was known,
both sound and scent, its message
unequivocal and its polite refusal to be drowned.
Your heart is human.
Never let it close.