Work · Michał P. Dybowski · September 2026
Hope deferred maketh the heart sick: but when the desire cometh, it is a tree of life.
Proverbs 13:12
A sister song to the Parable of the Two Clocks — a song of help in need: about the time of the sick, about truth that brings relief, and about a community that lifts the burden of suffering from a person. Metre: octosyllable. Rhyme: abab. Four verses with a refrain; in the final refrain the closing line is exchanged.
Verse ISomeone waits in the hospital night,
counting each of the long hours;
and time flows past him like a river —
no one wades the ford with him.
RefrainDo not take his time away —
time today is his medicine;
do not leave him without a voice —
a word of truth is brotherhood.
Verse IIYou who seek his door by night,
though your shift has long since ended,
do not carry it alone — you cannot deceive
a heart that is clay as well.
RefrainDo not take his time away —
time today is his medicine;
do not leave him without a voice —
a word of truth is brotherhood.
Verse IIIYou who reckon the year in ledgers
and keep watch that the books will close,
remember: time is life —
let the sick not know the cut.
RefrainDo not take his time away —
time today is his medicine;
do not leave him without a voice —
a word of truth is brotherhood.
Verse IVOur fathers, poor after the wars,
raised a house penny by penny,
that in it strangers might be kin —
let our gift build on.
Final refrainDo not take his time away —
time today is his medicine;
do not leave him without a voice —
from truth is brotherhood born.
Performance note
Addressees. The verses follow the four addresses of the “Epistle on the Time of the Sick”: to those who wait, to those who heal, to those who decide, and to all who have ever supported the treatment of a stranger. The refrain is shared, because the matter belongs to none of these groups alone.
The refrain as thesis. In oncology, time is not a service parameter but a clinical one — hence “time today is his medicine”. The second half of the refrain carries the principle of Just Culture into the language of song: a person who does not know what they are waiting for suffers twice over, and truth spoken in good time is the first form of relief. In the final refrain the thesis turns into a promise: from truth is brotherhood born.
Images. The first verse presents time as a river which the sick person should not have to cross alone. The second speaks of a heroism that is a non-renewable resource: the doctor’s heart “is clay as well”, so the burden is to be carried by the system, not by a single person. The third verse accepts that the public account must balance, but not by a cut aimed at the sick. The fourth recalls the Radium Institute, raised in the 1920s and 1930s from public donations — a generosity that built rather than patched.
Performance. A chorale at a calm tempo. The verses for solo voice, the refrain for choir or communal singing. The octosyllabic metre allows the melody of a community song to be chosen; in several places the rhymes are approximate (in the Polish: czasu — głosu, minął — gliną, stawiali — dalej), which in singing does not disturb the flow of the phrase.
