Reflection by Kerim M. Munir

Kerim M. Munir, M.D., MPH, D.Sc. is Director of Psychiatry in the University Center of Excellence in Developmental Disabilities at the Boston Children's Hospital. He is a Society Fellow in Global Health in the Scholars in Medicine Program and Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School. He completed his medical studies at University College London as a Commonwealth Scholar and trained in General Psychiatry at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the McLean Hospital, Harvard Medical School. He holds a doctorate in maternal child health and psychiatric epidemiology from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.  

The Magic Castle is my tribute to “a special colleague and friend, Carolyn Bridgemohan”, who worked in the Developmental-Behavioral Pediatrics Division at the Boston Children’s Hospital and died on August 16th, 2019. This poem was written on August 22nd, 2019.

The Magic Castle

By Kerim M. Munir

This is Friday, my favorite day of the week
Of all the weeks past
The patients we shared
I look for you, my beloved friend
To discover kindness
To listen, to inspire
To share our love of caring

This is Friday, my favorite day of the week
You are gone, too soon

May I ask you, to stay, in this Magic Castle
Every day
Be the light we need
To nurse the children

May I ask you, to stay, in this Magic Castle
Every day
Be the strength we use
To console the lonely
To befriend the challenged

May I ask you to stay, my beloved colleague
Every day
To help the helpless
To reach the parents

You will be there for us, won’t you?
For the joy we share
For the sorrow we feel
In this Magic Castle you helped build

You belong here
Every day
In the passion we share
The words we speak
Nothing can separate us

Reflection:
I grew up in Nicosia, Cyprus, at a time of civil conflict, and luckily educated at a bi-communal free Anglican grammar school where I first learned English and discovered Dylan Thomas, read in a beautiful Welsh accent by Richard Burton,

“To begin at the beginning: It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black….”

The 17-year-old Thomas had first developed the idea that led to Under Milk Wood while a student at the Swansea Grammar School, writing for the school magazine.

My interest in science and math led me to pursue studies in medicine in England, later training in psychiatry, and then in child and adolescent psychiatry, in Boston, where I work as an attending physician in the Developmental Medicine Center at the Boston Children’s Hospital.
Besides Dylan, other influences on my poetry include the romantic revolutionary Turkish, Polish, Georgian poet, Nazim Hikmet, “Human Landscapes from My Country: An epic novel in verse”, written in Turkish during the Second World War while serving a thirteen-year sentence as a political prisoner, as well as other short poems,

“The most beautiful sea
Hasn’t been crossed yet.
The most beautiful child
Hasn’t grown up yet.
The most beautiful days
We haven’t seen yet.
And the most beautiful
Words I wanted to tell you
I haven’t said yet”

And, the French lyrical poet, Eduard Éluard, whose poems during the Second World War carried messages of hope, that I discovered through my wife whose parents had both served in the Résistance in Brittany,

“And for the power of a word                         “Et par le pouvoir d’un mot
I restart my life                                               Je recommence ma vie
I was born to know you                                   Je suis né pour te connaître
To call you [Freedom]”                                   Pour te nommer [Liberté]”

Saint Cardinal John Henry Newman, Snapdragon, 1827 (declared a Saint October 2019)

 Ah! ’tis timely comfort given

By the answering breath of Heaven!

May it be! then well might I

In College cloister live and die.