Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Ethics - Linda Pastan

In ethics class so many years ago
our teacher asked this question every fall:
if there were a fire in a museum
which would you save, a Rembrandt painting
or an old woman who hadn't many
years left anyhow? Restless on hard chairs
caring little for pictures or old age
we'd opt one year for life, the next for art
and always half-heartedly. Sometimes
the woman borrowed my grandmother's face
leaving her usual kitchen to wander
some drafty, half imagined museum.
One year, feeling clever, I replied
why not let the woman decide herself?
Linda, the teacher would report, eschews
the burdens of responsibility.
This fall in a real museum I stand
before a real Rembrandt, old woman,
or nearly so, myself. The colors
within this frame are darker than autumn,
darker even than winter--the browns of earth,
though earth's most radiant elements burn
through the canvas. I know now that woman
and painting and season are almost one
and all beyond saving by children.

3 comments:

Kit said...

Wow, such an evocative poem, so much going on. For me, something like the movement from a careless not- knowing in a world of parts...to a deeply centered knowing. Thanks.

T Hunt said...

Love this poem, though I always wanted to know why she was taking the class over and over again, and why the teacher was so uninventive.

C.R. said...

There was nothing uninventive. It was just plain ethics. Which of course is redundit but when it is truly thought about you realize that she wanted the class to think deeply and that Linda Pastan wants the readers to do the same. The poem is a genius way to examplify the problems of what is actually ethical and what is just plain selfish desire.