I read this curious Victorian novel
in the suspended bliss of a mid-July night.
Moths storm the screen, longing to plaster
their frail dust against the single bulb
that lights my page. It’s 1870,
Old New York. Under the orange tree
Newland Archer kisses his fiancée,
May Welland, for only the second time
in their prescribed courtship and presses down
too hard in his ardor. As Edith Wharton tells it,
the blood rose to her face and she
drew back as if he had startled her.
Reading in bed before sleep, the luxury
of entering another world as if from above. . . .
I set it against the realities
of the breakfast table’s news. Today
the New York Times unravels
the story of Mukhtaran Bibi, a Pakistani
woman who was raped as retribution
for something her younger brother
was said to have done, while the tribesmen
danced for joy. Gang rape. The definition,
several attackers in rapid succession,
in no way conveys the fervor,
the male gutturals, the raw juice as
the treasured porcelain of her vagina
was shattered. Splintered again and again.
And after, to be jeered at.
The shame of it.
What could Wharton’s good virgin say
to this illiterate, courageous survivor
who dared to press charges?
— As if in her day
there were no tender girls turned prostitutes,
no desperate immigrants, no used-up carthorses
beaten to the pavement, their corpses
ravaged by dogs in Old New York. Look away,
May Welland! Turn aside as best you can.
Even defended from life on the streets,
from all that was turbulent, ragged and rough,
even unacknowledged, May, history repeats.
You must have seen enough.
from Still to Mow, W.W. Norton, 2007
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