Was A Man
Was a man, was a two-
faced man, pretended
he wasn't who he was,
who, in a men's room,
faced his hung-over
face in a mirror hung
over the towel rack.
The mirror was cracked.
Shaving close in that
looking glass, he nicked
his throat, bled blue
blood, grabbed a new
towel to patch the wrong
scratch, knocked off
the mirror and, facing
himself, almost intact,
in final terror hung
the wrong face back.
2 comments:
Philip Booth was my Honors English professor at Syracuse University in 1961 when I was a freshman. We read a novel a week! He signed my copy of The Islanders. I was happy to remember him today when you posted this poem in the service of moral man and the democratic experiment.
Thank you, Deda, for sharing that memory. "Was a Man" has meant something to me for a very long time.
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