John Tripoulas

John Tripoulas was born in Cleveland, Ohio. Until 2023 he worked as a surgeon in the Greek National Health Service. His maternal grandfather is the poet and Olympic athlete Demetrios Golemis. His poems are collected in two books titled A Soul Inside Each Stone (also available as a bilingual edition), and Polytropos

Oncology Etymology

At the bottom corner
of reliefs and vase paintings
depicting Herakles’ battle
with the Lernean Hydra
there’s a crab figure
nipping at his heels.
That’s Cancer, Hydra’s sidekick,
who came to the fight,
skulking, to distract the hero.
But Herakles made short work of the crab,
crushing him under his heel;
still, as a reward for his peeving and pinching,
Herakles-hater Hera immortalized him
into a constellation (next to the Lion of Nemea
also vanquished by Herakles).

When Hippocrates examined women
with a shell-hard lump on their breast,
a tumor that slowly clawed
at the surrounding flesh,
and caused pinching pain,
he called the disease “cancer”—
all he could do
for a patient soon to die.