The Boy
by Marilyn Hacker
It is the boy in me who’s looking out
the window, while someone across the street
mends a pillowcase, clouds shift, the gutter spout
pours rain, someone else lights a cigarette?
(Because he flinched, because he didn’t whirl
around, face them, because he didn’t hurl
the challenge back—”Fascists?”—not “Faggots”—Swine!
he briefly wonders—if he were a girl . . .)
He writes a line. He crosses out a line.
I’ll never be a man, but there’s a boy
crossing out words: the rain, the linen-mender,
are all the homework he will do today.
The absence and the priviledge of gender
confound in him, soprano, clumsy, frail.
Not neuter—neutral human, and unmarked,
the younger brother in the fairy tale
except, boys shouted “Jew!” across the park
at him when he was coming home from school.
The book that he just read, about the war,
the partisans, is less a terrible
and thrilling story, more a warning, more
a code, and he must puzzle out the code.
He has short hair, a red sweatshirt. They know
something about him—that he should be proud
of? That’s shameful if it shows?
That got you killed in 1942.
In his story, do the partisans
have sons? Have grandparents? Is he a Jew
more than he is a boy, who’ll be a man
someday? Someone who’ll never be a man
looks out the window at the rain he thought
might stop. He reads the sentence he began.
He writes down something that he crosses out.
End of the poem
15 random poems
- The Passing of the Elder Bards by William Wordsworth
- The Apple Trees at Olema by Robert Hass
- Владимир Британишский – Чернышев переулок и мост Чернышев
- Free Love by Rabindranath Tagore
- Blow of an ax by Yosa Buson
- Владимир Высоцкий – Надо с кем-то рассорить кого-то
- Jerusalem Delivered – Book 04 – part 01 by Torquato Tasso
- Planet Earth by P. K. Page
- The Giver by Sara Teasdale
- Day That I Have Loved by Rupert Brooke
- Lepracaun or Fairy Shoemaker, The by William Allingham
- Ode to H.H. The Nizam Of Hyderabad by Sarojini Naidu
- Be Prepared by Raj Napal
- Attack On The Ad-Man
- Robert Burns: Had I The Wyte? She Bade Me:
Some external links:
Duckduckgo.com – the alternative in the US
Quant.com – a search engine from France, and also an alternative, at least for Europe
Yandex – the Russian search engine (it’s probably the best search engine for image searches).
