Maggie's Farm

This is just the conclusion of Robert Pinsky's long poem (1975) Essays on Psychiatrists (h/t, Ars Psychiatrica).  Full version here.

Essaying to distinguish these men and women,
Who try to give medicine for misery,
From the rest of us, I find I have failed

To discover what essential statement could be made
About psychiatrists that would not apply
To all human beings, or what statement

About all human beings would not apply
Equally to psychiatrists. They, too,
Consult psychiatrists. They try tentatively

To understand, to find healing speech. They work
For truth and for money. They are contingent...
They talk and talk...they are, in the words

Of a lute-player I met once who despised them,
"Into machines"...all true of all, so that it seems
That "psychiatrist" is a synonym for "human being."

Even in their prosperity which is perhaps
Like their contingency merely more vivid than that
Of lutanists, opticians, poets--all into

Truth, into music, into yearning, suffering,
Into elegant machines and luxuries, with caroling
And kisses, with soft rich cloth and polished

Substances, with cash, tennis and fine electronics,
Liberty of lush and reverend places--goods
And money in their contingency and spiritual

Grace evoke the way we are all psychiatrists
All fumbling at so many millions of miles
Per minute and so many dollars per hour

Through the exploding or collapsing spaces
Between stars, saying what we can.