Linda Pastan on Ethical Choices

[John Cole]

Sorry it's a poem but it's a readable (i.e. Andy Fox may like it) one.


Ethics



In ethics class so many years ago
our teacher asked this question every fall:
if there were a fire in a museum
which would you save, a Rembrandt painting
or an old woman who hadn't many
years left anyhow?

Restless on hard chairs
caring little for pictures or old age
we'd opt one year for life, the next for art
and always half-heartedly.....

This fall in a real museum I stand
before a real Rembrandt, old woman,
or nearly so, myself. The colors
within this frame are darker than autumn,
darker even than winter - the browns of earth,
though earth's most radiant elements burn
through the canvas. I know now that woman
and painting and season are almost one

and all beyond saving by children.