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In "The Country of Hearts," a book of essays that I wrote about my experience in cardiology,

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I say that I admire the literal heart, the pump,

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but that there are two hearts that beat in all of us.

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Not only is there this pump, for which I have the greatest admiration,

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over the course of a lifetime it beats several billion heartbeats,

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but I also have a great what amounts to veneration for the metaphorical heart,

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the seat of the emotions, the kind of heart that the Tin Man needed in The Wizard of Oz.

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So I have a great deal of admiration for both these hearts.

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At the same time, the pump, for a poet and for the cardiologist, I think,

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reminds us, with its steady thump-thump in the night,

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that when it stops, that's all she wrote.

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Hippocrates said, Ars longa vita brevis.

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The art is long, but life is short.

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And I think both the poet and the cardiologist are aware of the fact that life is short,

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and they hope, the poet does in any event, to make something that will last,

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to make art that will last.