Adorable images,
Plaster of Paris
Lilies of the field,
You are not alive, therefore
Pathos will be out of place.
But I have learned
A strange fact about your fate,
And it is this:
After you go out of fashion
Beneath your many fashions,
Or when your elbows and knees
Have been bruised powdery white,
So that you are no good to anybody—
They will take away your gowns,
Your sables and bathing suits,
Leaving exposed before all men
Your inaccessible bellies
And pointless nubilities.
Movers will come by night
And load you all into trucks
And take you away to the Camps,
Where soldiers, or the State Police,
Will use you as targets
For small-arms practice,
Leading me to inquire,
Since pathos is out of place,
What it is that they are practicing.
To the Mannequins / November 1961
by Howard Nemerov (1920–1991)
