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Clara Swain
(born in Elmira, New York, 1834 - 1910)
Clara, she is clear
and she is Swain, that swan,
with wings curled in bloody gauze, reeking of
iodine and chloroform.
Clara, the first doctor and Indian missionary,
wanted to love all, and forever –
yet who dares to love
and dress wounds for eternity?
This world serves only a handful of human
pieces on the plate of Love.
Clara enters India on an elephant called
The Methodist Woman's Foreign Missionary Society
giving young Indian women medicine
and the curing arts.
Narrow walls of opulent female chambers overflow
with whispers, tremors, mold and germs, dark diseases
widening and healing
under her thundering
prayers, needles, and procedures.
For all the sick ladies of Zenan
there is little time left, under the red wind