'Did You Bring Me Anything', Gary Margolis

'Did You Bring Me Anything', Gary Margolis

I know it's your birthday and I am an hour
late. I didn't think there would be another
girl for me to talk with, as I was putting on my

coat, turning off the light. Soft touch or not,
you know how hard it is for me to say no
when someone asks to speak with me and it is

their eyes that say first what they have
to say. I've read all the numbers that make me
sick about men who never learned to take

no for an answer and turn themselves into a cruel
statistic, turning a girl, most often
a friend, into another word, through no

choice of hers, she now must call herself.
I don't want to think of you this way,
especially today as you turn six, but having

just told another student it's not her fault,
I must find the words no father can give you
to use some night when there are only miles

between us. Words, I hope, your date's father
has taught his son to hear, even if there were nights
he was late getting home, with nothing in his hands.

Lot's Wife

Lot's Wife

They say I looked back out of curiosity.
But I could have had other reasons.
I looked back mourning my silver bowl.
Carelessly, while tying my sandal strap.
So I wouldn't have to keep staring at the righteous nape
of my husband Lot's neck.
From the sudden conviction that if I dropped dead
he wouldn't so much as hesitate.
From the disobedience of the meek.
Checking for pursuers.
Struck by the silence, hoping God had changed his mind.
Our two daughters were already vanishing over the hilltop.
I felt age within me. Distance.
The futility of wandering. Torpor.
I looked back setting my bundle down.
I looked back not knowing where to set my foot.
Serpents appeared on my path,
spiders, field mice, baby vultures.
They were neither good nor evil now--every living thing
was simply creeping or hopping along in the mass panic.
I looked back in desolation.
In shame because we had stolen away.
Wanting to cry out, to go home.
Or only when a sudden gust of wind
unbound my hair and lifted up my robe.
It seemed to me that they were watching from the walls of Sodom
and bursting into thunderous laughter again and again.
I looked back in anger.
To savor their terrible fate.
I looked back for all the reasons given above.
I looked back involuntarily.
It was only a rock that turned underfoot, growling at me.
It was a sudden crack that stopped me in my tracks.
A hamster on its hind paws tottered on the edge.
It was then we both glanced back.
No, no. I ran on,
I crept, I flew upward
until darkness fell from the heavens
and with it scorching gravel and dead birds.
I couldn't breathe and spun around and around.
Anyone who saw me must have thought I was dancing.
It's not inconceivable that my eyes were open.
It's possible I fell facing the city.

by Wislawa Szymborska