Heart to Heart
“Are you my ghostzzz?”
Otto Loewi tossed and turned,
his sleep down to a sunless sea,
“yr laytz… azz... uhuh… ulzzz...”
and snored as he mumbled
in the still of the night.
Coleridge pricked up his ears,
but wasn’t quite able
to catch what the German was saying,
“as usual,” maybe, or “asshole.”
Samuel Taylor, being Coleridge,
took another shot of soothing,
and decided to suffer his fate
as according to plan, the choice
was a question of Nature,
of things as they are
or things as they could be,
connecting people
and helping those in need.
Coleridge cut the German’s heart out,
carefully, making sure it kept beating.
He thought of being
being pain, of death and love,
pain of sleep, and of love of sleep,
and designated Loewi’s heart
as the second, the recipient.
His own heart would be the donor.
He cut it out as well, with a little extra,
the vagus nerve still attached,
carefully, making sure it kept beating,
ghost or no ghost.
The spirit of the experiment
demanded total dedication,
candid and frank.
“You rilly are my ghostzzz,”
Loewi smiled in his sleep,
eager to forge this friendship
between scientist and poet,
the sentimental and the grisly.
Coleridge, heartless now,
obliged as noblesse does
with a jolt to the organ in the dish.
It started beating slower.
The crazy Englishman
took fluid from the meat
and applied it to the other organ
in the other dish.
“Oh yezzz, I can feel itz now,”
Loewi’s eyes flashing, his hair floating.
The recipient heart started beating
slower to the speed of darkness,
to the beat of the juice.
Coleridge, to his no small surprise
and even bigger mortification,
heard the German
singing and not-singing at once,
in perfect English,
“Relax!”
and
“Don’t do it!”
Otto Loewi tossed and turned,
his sleep down to a sunless sea,
“yr laytz… azz... uhuh… ulzzz...”
and snored as he mumbled
in the still of the night.
Coleridge pricked up his ears,
but wasn’t quite able
to catch what the German was saying,
“as usual,” maybe, or “asshole.”
Samuel Taylor, being Coleridge,
took another shot of soothing,
and decided to suffer his fate
as according to plan, the choice
was a question of Nature,
of things as they are
or things as they could be,
connecting people
and helping those in need.
Coleridge cut the German’s heart out,
carefully, making sure it kept beating.
He thought of being
being pain, of death and love,
pain of sleep, and of love of sleep,
and designated Loewi’s heart
as the second, the recipient.
His own heart would be the donor.
He cut it out as well, with a little extra,
the vagus nerve still attached,
carefully, making sure it kept beating,
ghost or no ghost.
The spirit of the experiment
demanded total dedication,
candid and frank.
“You rilly are my ghostzzz,”
Loewi smiled in his sleep,
eager to forge this friendship
between scientist and poet,
the sentimental and the grisly.
Coleridge, heartless now,
obliged as noblesse does
with a jolt to the organ in the dish.
It started beating slower.
The crazy Englishman
took fluid from the meat
and applied it to the other organ
in the other dish.
“Oh yezzz, I can feel itz now,”
Loewi’s eyes flashing, his hair floating.
The recipient heart started beating
slower to the speed of darkness,
to the beat of the juice.
Coleridge, to his no small surprise
and even bigger mortification,
heard the German
singing and not-singing at once,
in perfect English,
“Relax!”
and
“Don’t do it!”