Ethics

I choose ethics as my poem this week. The first read through I felt indifferent to either choice the old lady or the Rembrandt painting. I also tried to decide which I would choose at first I thought I would choose the painting because it is eternal and the lady wouldn’t live forever. But then it made me think of in the road how the boy threw away the flute to me was a symbol of the beginning of civilization and the end of civilization in an apocalypse. So from then on I thought of the fire as a catastrophic even affecting the world.
Which lead me to think who even cares about art art? Art is human expression from the artist, well Rembrandt is dead. What if that old lady was Madonna? Would I save her or a painting each is art.
If I was the old lady I could care less about saving the painting to be honest, there has to be a million copies of this painting but no copies of me the old lady. This poem also made me think of the movie The Day After Tomorrow there is a scene where they are burning the books in the New York Public Library for warmth and one of the men sat in a corner holding on to a book for dear life. It turns out the book was a Gutenberg Bible he didn’t want to burn it because it was the first book to be printed and it was a symbol of human life. That makes sense to me if your freezing to death but it wasn’t the actual Gutenberg Bible it was a copy. I think I would choose the person as long as there were other copies if it was only a fire. Now if I had to choose between a old lady or Shroud of Turin I would push the old lady to the ground and trample her to save the Shroud of Turin, and quite frankly if I were the old lady I would hope someone would trample me to save it. I know that’s not the most pc but that is what this poem is trying to evoke in the reader to find the scenarios where they would let the old lady burn.

Those winter Sundays

In this poem the father works all week and no one every thanks him. I thought it was interesting that the one day he has off the father goes and thanks someone else. I thought that Robert Hayden’s tone was hateful and resentful that his father lived a thankless life. Which made me wonder why the little boy can’t thank his father himself? The last line “What did I know, what I did I know of love’s austere and lonely offices.” I automatically thought of The Road and being a parent in general. I think being a parent is full of gratification but you don’t really get thanked in till your children are old enough to fully realize how much you sacrificed and did for them. This poem wasn’t the warm happy Sunday poem I thought it would be but I thought it was still interesting.