I agree with all the comments so far.
I'd add that there's another appealing aspect to this poem that's perhaps easy to overlook. That is, for all the darkness and sadness of its subject matter, there's genuine humor in the poem as well, though the humor works in service of a serious and emotional design and not to disturb the somber and sad sense of resignation that the poem leaves us with. The poem reflects the sort of gallows humor that sometimes can be found in the darkest situations. It's almost as if the speaker were being sarcastic to God and not approaching God as a true supplicant who actually believes that God exists. A true supplicant and believer in God, I think, would have asked God to make the woman well, not to "smite the intern" ("smite," I would also argue, is a humorous word in a poem with otherwise modern diction) and to provide "flirtatious men in nearby beds." And "Given her hair, consider amnesty/ for sins of vanity" is also, I believe, a line that has a decidedly humorous bent without turning the poem into a humorous poem. There's also humor in the idea that God, and not the doctors, should "flood her nerves with sedatives."
The "humor," if that's the word for it, creates perhaps the poem's most appealing dimension. That is, the poem seems to portray a speaker with an agnostic view of God, one who never trusted God, and one who perhaps has tended to mock theology, but who is turning to prayer nonetheless because some loved-one is dying. It's a poem which nominally embraces God but which also disavows "trite consolations," and a poem in which the speaker can only bring himself to ask for small favors (a sedative, not a cure) from a God who is generally thought to be omnipotent. So ultimately, I experience this poem as a reflection on ambivalence about the idea of God and how that ambivalence runs up against our experience of mortality.
It's a wonderful sonnet, that much is clear, although my attempt to examine why it's so wonderful may have led me to ramble a bit (sorry about that).
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