The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Panacea by Alison Strub

---

Address to Hippocrates

On the Sacred Disease,
there are now over forty types.

Could I save you more easily
if by demon than by heredity.

I walked outside and the sun
was no longer the sun,
and the earth was no longer earth,
and the water was no longer the water
and the air was no longer air
and the fire was no longer fire.

Could I be more
secure in prayers
and a basin of holy water
than in treatment.

The spring was blood,
the summer was yellow
the autumn was black.

I am trying to achieve balance,
even when the gait shifts
and the hands and arms move,
as if in a dance.