Clamp the red march onward!
Cut the winding trench!
Mask a visage for protection
from the visceral drench.
Light the forge in battle!
Keep the battlefield alive.
Hear the laborious drumbeat
of a heart trying to survive.
Stainless steel and knowledge
in the forge are fired
Gone are human needs -
Death is never tired.
On each second rests a lifespan.
Each minute gambles years.
A surgeon only has two hands
and no mortal fears.
The battle surges forward
as blood is forced right back
from the heart it came from;
a heart still under attack.
Even as the battle ended,
with blood, tears and sweat,
the war raged ever onward,
Death remains a threat.
Every day a battle.
Every life a war.
Against Death and the ethereal
survival is the score.
This poem was written after meeting a heart transplant survivor at the museum dedicated to the first successful heart transplant (at Groote Schuur, Cape Town)