Whom we'd best forget, within whose bony hand
Lies crumpled the Secret she will never tell.
Which secret concerns the nature of The String
That all Three tend, and whether it be the wire
Designed to receive the message, or to fire
The tiny initial relay. In the end,
The question is whether merely Determining
Or really Knowing is what we most pretend
To honor because it seems most frightening
And worship because we hold it most to blame.
I once saw Dr. Johnson in a vision;
His hat was in his hand, and a decision
Of import on his lips. "There is," he said,
"Free Will, and there's an end on't." All the same,
Atropos and her sisters, overhead,
Grinned at this invocation of their name.
John Hollander
SHE WEPT , SHE RAILED
She wept, she railed, she spurned the meat
Men toss into a muslin cage
To make their spineless doxy bleat
For pleasure and for patronage,
As
if she had no choice but eat
The lewd bait of a squalid age.
That moment when the lights go out
The years shape to the sprawling thing,
A marmoset with bloodied clout,
A pampered flank that learns to sing,
Without the grace, she cried, to doubt
The postures of the underling.
