In Place Of A Curse

By Ciardi, John

“At the next vacancy for God, if I am elected...”

At the next vacancy for God, if I am elected,
I shall forgive last the delicately wounded who,
having been slugged no harder than anyone else,
never got up again, neither to fight back,
nor to finger their jaws in painful admiration.

They who are wholly broken, and they in whom mercy is understanding,
I shall embrace at once and lead to pillows in heaven.
But they who are the meek by trade, baiting the best of their betters with extortions of a mock-helplessness,
I shall take last to love, and never wholly.

Let them all in Heaven - I abolish Hell -
but let it be read over them as they enter:
Beware the calculations of the meek, who gambled nothing
gave nothing, and could never receive enough.

Sent in by Leslie Harpold (email, web), who provides her biography as follows: “No matter what you've heard, Leslie is a genius and everyone loves her. Get to know her now before she gets as famous as she's destined to be, so you can say 'I knew her back in the days she lived in Hell's Kitchen.' Despite her greatness, she is not stuck up at all, and a friend to children, animals and the elderly. She has no secrets Well, not many.”

Sent in by Leslie Harpold (email, web), who provides her biography as follows: “No matter what you've heard, Leslie is a genius and everyone loves her. Get to know her now before she gets as famous as she's destined to be, so you can say 'I knew her back in the days she lived in Hell's Kitchen.' Despite her greatness, she is not stuck up at all, and a friend to children, animals and the elderly. She has no secrets Well, not many.”