POEM
Hadas, Rachel
POEM Rachel Hadas Stress Philoctetcs' venom-sodden foot; Job's boils no potsherd scraping can relieve; Amfortas' wound, forever festering— men suffer for no reason plain to see. Now. stoic in...
...To love, be loved in turn, never a simple matter, has become the seamy side, all bristle, itch, and sting, desire's dynamic somehow gone amok halfway between skeleton and skin...
...In the Butler Library mural Athena shines, wrapped in her 3-D aegis...
...Anywhere...
...I would have named them Fear, Ignorance, Prejudice—but now all these seem secondary to this new disease whose absence must be our idea of health, celestial serenity, a cool and unmarked carapace, exterior radiant with complacency, proclaiming a mind of luminous tranquility, a body open to the world's regard...
...Angry eruptions, back and flanks—oh ves, no one hesitates to name the cause...
...The etiology is love gone wrong, turned inside out...
...Or rather less a mantle than a germ which once it penetrates the outer layer won't settle for oblivion again but hovers hungry somewhere in the air...
...stoic in the scarlet leotard Of eczema, you join their company...
...Rage, frustration, disappointment, loss— what's not concealed beneath that flagrant cloak...
...Bald green demons on each side of her lower and clutch...
...Like Philoctetes' shipmates, like the friends taking Job to task for what foul crime, confronted with affliction we think blame and promptly diagnose it with a name...
Vol. 60 • May 1996 • No. 5
