poem for today - The Clock in the Closet (Piercy)
The clock in the closet
I'll never get old, says the fifteen-year-old,
knowing that when they ask her,
she'll just say no. No thank you.
I'll stay eighteen, I'll stop at twenty-
eight or thirty-five or forty-two.
Only a moron or a masochist would
accept more years, like a dish
of overcooked fish passed you
at a dinner party. Just refuse.
There is choice if you have the money:
go under the scalpel once, twice,
seven times. Liposuction, face
lifts, eye jobs, botulin inserted under
the skin, a peel or two. You don't
exactly look young, but you
have seized power over your body:
made yourself into an artifact
like a tight and pretty death mask.
Every aging woman knows that inside,
behind her face, her scrawny neck
and puffy cheeks, the same swan
girl swims over her reflection:
we are all that we once were
behind the mirror in that downy cave.
The same gaze measures the world.
If the ghost did rise from the failing
body, what age would it be?
Myself, I can't spare a single year.
I see my younger selves on landings
of that winding stair of years, gesticulating,
weeping, banging my head on the stone
of indifference, clawing until my hands
bled on the granite flesh of cold lovers,
fighting the wrong battles in the right wars,
dropping words that would swarm me, stinging.
I wring what wisdom I own from every hour.
"The clock in the closet"
by Marge Piercy
from Colors Passing Through Us
©2003
I'll never get old, says the fifteen-year-old,
knowing that when they ask her,
she'll just say no. No thank you.
I'll stay eighteen, I'll stop at twenty-
eight or thirty-five or forty-two.
Only a moron or a masochist would
accept more years, like a dish
of overcooked fish passed you
at a dinner party. Just refuse.
There is choice if you have the money:
go under the scalpel once, twice,
seven times. Liposuction, face
lifts, eye jobs, botulin inserted under
the skin, a peel or two. You don't
exactly look young, but you
have seized power over your body:
made yourself into an artifact
like a tight and pretty death mask.
Every aging woman knows that inside,
behind her face, her scrawny neck
and puffy cheeks, the same swan
girl swims over her reflection:
we are all that we once were
behind the mirror in that downy cave.
The same gaze measures the world.
If the ghost did rise from the failing
body, what age would it be?
Myself, I can't spare a single year.
I see my younger selves on landings
of that winding stair of years, gesticulating,
weeping, banging my head on the stone
of indifference, clawing until my hands
bled on the granite flesh of cold lovers,
fighting the wrong battles in the right wars,
dropping words that would swarm me, stinging.
I wring what wisdom I own from every hour.
"The clock in the closet"
by Marge Piercy
from Colors Passing Through Us
©2003