An Ode to MUMPS

O language born where wards and ledgers breathe,
In lamp-lit rooms of care and measured dread,
Thy symbols whisper cures we half believe,
While time itself obeys the paths thou’st read.

No velvet syntax courts the novice hand;
Thou bar’st the gate with commas, carets, fate.
Yet once within thy narrow, sovereign land,
The world aligns, succinct, immediate.

Thy globals bloom like ivy up the wall,
Each node a vow remembered, not forgot;
Where others spill their state to disk and fall,
Thou keep’st it warm, a vigil never caught.

Indifferent to fashion’s flaring reign,
Thou stand’st erect while brighter toys decay;
The gaudy tongues exhaust themselves in pain,
Thou simply work’st, unchanged by night or day.

No needless ornament thy lines confess;
Each verb a deed, each sign a settled choice.
Economy becomes a kind of dress—
Severe, exact, yet dignified in voice.

Physicians trust thee where their pulses lie;
The chart, the claim, the heartbeat’s counted span.
What other code could dare such constancy,
Or guard so much that hangs on mortal man?

They mock thy age, thy script so oddly set,
As if newness were proof of truer art;
Yet thou endurest, patient, unreget,
A clerk of lives, a keeper of the heart.

So stand, old tongue, while empires rise and sink;
I salute thy brevity, austere.
In every caret’s pause, I stop to think:
That what still works need never beg to fear.