Poem: ‘How I Became a Spitfire Pilot during My Cataract Operation’

Science in meter and verse

By Roger Camp edited by Dava Sobel & Clara Moskowitz

Illustration of an eye with planes passing in front of the iris. — Masha Foya

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For Lawrence J. Geisse, M.D.

Entering the operating theater,
I climbed onto the gurney
resting my head
on the mock headrest

a geisha dreaming
on a woodblock.
The whine of the machine’s descent
distracted me

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the crosshairs locking in
on its target
finding myself a fighter pilot
inside a cockpit canopy.

An exhale of pressure,
slight as a concubine
kissing an eyelid,
followed by an ultrasound impact.

My lens spidered, a shattered windshield,
each fragment of the cataract
dutifully vacuumed
just as Dr. Ridley

tweezered the splinters of plexiglass
from the Spitfire pilot’s eyes,
an ace returning from the European theater
of operations.

The lack of infection
sparked Ridley’s mind, the man who
would unmask the blind with his invention
a plastic lens

uncurling inside the eye
for all to see.

English ophthalmologist Harold Ridley, driven by the need to treat the novel injuries of World War II fighter pilots, pioneered the 1949 solution that earned him global recognition as “father of the intraocular lens.”

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