Written by
John Matthew |
You hide your face in shame,
But I can see your private parts,
Have you no contrition,
To expose yourself, shamelessly, thus?
Tell me what does it feel,
To be watched while you strain?
Is that why you hang your head in shame;
Has all embarrassment left you?
I know it’s hard; you need your money,
But couldn’t you put the money —
You spend on spirits and tobacco,
To use that public facility on the street corner?
Is it communion with nature you seek?
Or the pleasure of shocking,
Young children, and pubescent girls?
Your revenge, your wretchedness!
If it’s your laziness, unforgivable indolence,
And reluctance to pay Rupee two,
And wash with dignity in that public facility,
Then bury your face, wretch, and die in shame.
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Written by
Stephen Dunn |
When Mother died
I thought: now I'll have a death poem.
That was unforgivable.
Yet I've since forgiven myself
as sons are able to do
who've been loved by their mothers.
I stared into the coffin
knowing how long she'd live,
how many lifetimes there are
in the sweet revisions of memory.
It's hard to know exactly
how we ease ourselves back from sadness,
but I remembered when I was twelve,
1951, before the world
unbuttoned its blouse.
I had asked my mother (I was trembling)
If I could see her breasts
and she took me into her room
without embarrassment or coyness
and I stared at them,
afraid to ask for more.
Now, years later, someone tells me
Cancers who've never had mother love
are doomed and I, a Cancer
feel blessed again. What luck
to have had a mother
who showed me her breasts
when girls my age were developing
their separate countries,
what luck
she didn't doom me
with too much or too little.
Had I asked to touch,
Perhaps to suck them,
What would she have done?
Mother, dead woman
Who I think permits me
to love women easily
this poem
is dedicated to where
we stopped, to the incompleteness
that was sufficient
and to how you buttoned up,
began doing the routine things
around the house.
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