MICHAEL SALCMAN was born in Pilsen, Czechoslovakia in 1946 and came to the United States in 1949. He attended the Combined Program in Liberal Arts and Medical Education at Boston University, receiving both the B.A. and M.D. in 1969. He trained in neurophysiology at the National Institutes of Health and in neurological surgery at Columbia University. He served as chairman of neurosurgery at the University of Maryland from 1984 through 1991. His early medical career was profiled by Jon Franklin and Alan Doelp in their book, Not Quite A Miracle (Doubleday, 1983).
What they call Alexander's sarcophagus sits
in a museum in the city of Istanbul—
a relic, a lie, a boon to the weary tourist
who shambles in and sees his hand glow
with purple light in a room full of coffins.
I sit at a table with cloud-misted neighbors,
our masks like fallen plates;
some of us have grown calmer in the altitude
some of us, freed of our lowland past,
become vertiginous.