Psychotherapy Prognosis
Your history can’t be cured. It only goes
To something like remission lacking hope.
Your past remains. Its presence, fungal, grows
In X-rays probing memories. You can cope
If you are drugged enough with commonplace
Forgetfulness and don’t dig up old years,
That moment when he said that thing, disgrace
For scarlet love, a tumor lacking tears,
That moment when she told the truth, that time
When you admitted you were stupid in
Your love, when reverence became a crime.
You’d known that it was all shot through with sin.
..The therapist can’t make it shrink to nil.
….The cruelty will hunker, cancer, shrill.