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.
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.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteThank you, Deda, for sharing that memory. "Was a Man" has meant something to me for a very long time.