When Mother divorced you, we were glad. She took it and <br />took it in silence, all those years and then <br />kicked you out, suddenly, and her <br />kids loved it. Then you were fired, and we <br />grinned inside, the way people grinned when <br />Nixon's helicopter lifted off the South <br />Lawn for the last time. We were tickled <br />to think of your office taken away, <br />your secretaries taken away, <br />your lunches with three double bourbons, <br />your pencils, your reams of paper. Would they take your <br />suits back, too, those dark <br />carcasses hung in your closet, and the black <br />noses of your shoes with their large pores? <br />She had taught us to take it, to hate you and take it <br />until we pricked with her for your <br />annihilation, Father. Now I <br />pass the bums in doorways, the white <br />slugs of their bodies gleaming through slits in their <br />suits of compressed silt, the stained <br />flippers of their hands, the underwater <br />fire of their eyes, ships gone down with the <br />lanterns lit, and I wonder who took it and <br />took it from them in silence until they had <br />given it all away and had nothing <br />left but this.<br /><br />Sharon Olds<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-victims/
