Abrasions contusions lacerations and puncture wounds
Surely not a comprehensive taxonomy
Omitting as it does
Insults chemical radioactive and psychological

The organism or perhaps the species or genus
Will seek to avoid such distress
And in cases of repeated incursion
Will develop mechanisms for coping and defending

But in each case some pretext
Might be imagined to justify the trauma
The hypodermic the harrowing treatment of cancer
The defense of the innocent or aid to the afflicted

And a person who voluntarily accepts the attack
Thereby rationally consenting to suffer
For say therapeutic or humanitarian reasons
Must overcome organic resistance

Must overcome oneself
And might this maneuver be accomplished
Without new inflictions
Without new increments to the world of pain

Poor Settembrini yearned to produce
The exhaustive catalogue of suffering
A liberal and a consumptive lived on exhausted
By the work of more than all the lifetimes