The authors [1] write that in
their study of converters three young men
were not infected by an accident
or casual carelessness. All three,
knowing well how it would be,
deliberately and with informed consent,
chose to yield themselves to HIV.

Can we believe the choice they made?
We who pray for nothing else, but pray
that we not die that way, that we evade
not only HIV, but every pain,
the prostate's bone-wrack or the breast's,
dementia's death in life, paralysis,
even the so-called "minor" agony
of lungs too scarred to breathe?

The reason that they gave was need to be
accepted by another, friend or lover,
already of that doomed fraternity.
For those of us who long
for the quick end, the ventricle
quivering into quick unconsciousness,
no love could be that strong,
or comprehensible,

And yet,
love has been known to do far stranger things,
when called upon to share the sufferings
of others. A myth survives that Damien
prayed once to be a leper that he might
move closer to those served at Molokai

and Catherine of Genoa when tending
the victims of another plague expressed
her love for them and for her master, Christ,
by taking purulence into a kiss.

H.J. Van Peenen

Ponca City, OK 74604-2513