A Poetic Parody About Ontario's Hospitals: Lewis Carroll's "MERGERWOCKY"

WORDPLAY post #10

POETIC PARODY LYRICS:  "Mergerwocky", G. Hurwitz, published in the Western News, 2000,  This poetic parody draws inspiration from Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky.

ORIGINAL POEM: "Jabberwocky", Lewis Carroll, 1871; the poem was included in the children's novel "Through the Looking Glass" in 1871.    

EDITED: The poem was modified by Giorgio Coniglio to fit the format of this blogsite.

KEYWORDS: pastiche, classicsong, Canada, medical

BACKGROUND INFORMATION:
 This tale invokes an earlier period of health-care budget constraints (the mid 1990s). Manoeuvers employed by hospitals included redefinition of jobs, cancellation of services, ward closures, and even ventures into the non-health sector e.g. energy-from-waste technology. In Canada, provincial governments capped physicians’ total billings, delisted previously insured procedures and mandated employee leaves (named after Ontario’s Premier Rae). The largest legacy has been left by forced mergers of paired rival hospitals, who often initially had different skill-sets and academic pretensions. 

MERGERWOCKY

(poetic parody based on Jabberwocky")

Restructure! so the i.v. teams

Did energize recycled waste;

De-focused were the laser beams

And the closed wards outplaced.

"Beware the Mergertalks, my son!

St Joe's won't bite Health Council lunch!

Beware the Job-Job bird, and shun

The clawbacking Budgetcrunch.   

He shook his VPs' golden hands:

Time-line proactively he maps,

Then spreadshot he by the Lap-Top key

And graphed the Full-Times' caps.  

And  as in upsized thought stood he,

The Mergerwock, with errored claims

Came sniffling through the OPD,

De-listing as it came.

Old site! New Site! And deep in debt:

The shuttle-bus reshuffled wards.

"Let's integrate, new Mission state!"

He e-mailed to the Board. 

"And hast thou done the Merger-deal?"

A mix of cheers and groans and snarls;

"Come to Grand Rounds, my deanish boys

At the Princess-Di-and-Charles". 

'Twas Wednesday; at the clubhouse bar

Complained the Rae-dayed Docs anew,

"Our Conjoint Foursomes shoot near par,

But the Brass still play through!"