Below is the poem I promised to post last week in response to this discussion, in which Kirstin, the editor of Catapult, has recently weighed in about her reasons for publishing the controversial article.
The poem was written for a poetry class in 1994 in which we were to keep the same end words in each stanza we wrote. I am not really pleased with how this poem reads, even though I haven’t done anything to fix it in the intervening decade or so, but I do like some of the images in it.
John 8
It was an odd time to make an ending,
When so much was beginning.
Fresh silence soothing the fever of the night.
Clean sunlight washing the dusty temple yard.
And a young Rabbi softly rending its ancient stony walls.
But they had brought the woman there to make an ending,
When so much was beginning,
With scalpel-stones to excise her cancer in the night,
With harsh light to expose her temple’s filthy yard,
And have the Rabbi raze her crumbling, ruined walls.
And the woman knew it was her ending,
When so much was beginning.
No dawn would soothe her fevered night.
No light could wash her cluttered yard.
And the Rabbi’s word would start the battering of her walls.
And the Rabbi made an ending,
When so much was beginning.
His scalpel cut the stone throwers’ cancer in the night.
His light exposed their hidden dusty yards.
And His word softly slammed their hardened rocky walls.
And so there was an ending,
And so much was beginning.
The Dawn had soothed the fevered Night
And stones patterned the dusty Temple yard,
And the Rabbi had softly razed its ancient stony walls.