No Sex for Priests
The horse in harness suffers;
he's not feeling up to snuff.
The feeler's sensate but the cook
pronounces lobsters tough.
The chain's too short: The dog's at pains
to reach a sheaf of shade. One half a squirrel's whirling there
upon the interstate. That rough around
the monkey's eye is cancer. Only God's
impervious—he's deaf and blind. But he's
not dumb: to answer for it all, his spokesmen
aren't allowed to come.
Copyright Credit: Heather McHugh, “No Sex for Priests” from The American Scholar (2006). Use by permission of the author.
Source: The American Scholar (University of Washington Press, 2006)