October 2017
Michele Stepto
michele.stepto@yale.edu
michele.stepto@yale.edu
This poem owes almost everything to Nathaniel Hawthorne, whose retellings of ancient myths, intended to make them palatable to American boys and girls, very quickly supplanted the originals. If you think Pandora had a box or that Midas had a daughter, you too have imbibed at Hawthorne's Fountain of Pirene.
The Box
It didn't open simply by a latch
that glided left or right, moving without
a sound. No, she could see there was a catch
to getting the damn thing open. She'd read about
such boxes in the stories of her childhood,
boxes with hidden springs, a cunning knot
that kept them closed up tight, so that you would
have plenty of time, undoing the knot, to think
about whether this mysterious block of wood
should even be opened, and whether that plink plink
coming from inside the box was the sound
of pleasure or such troubles as might sink
you and your world together. The dilemma wound
its way in her thought. How to find the light
in hidden things? How, even, to expound
the meaning of the dark? And while she thought
the box yawned open and spilled its contents out.
© 2017 Michele Stepto
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