The Woman of Progressive Intellect, 1914
By Adam Kirsch
"The Woman of Progressive Intellect (Intellectural), 1914," by August Sander
If it were not for her enlightened eyes,
She’d be the witch that intellect denies
Has ever walked the earth: the sunken jaw,
The blunt chin like a claw-toothed hammer’s claw,
The stubbed and crooking finger, and the skin
As stained and crinkly as her crinoline,
Would make a loving grandchild run away.
It takes another kind of love to see
How spirit, in its tactical withdrawal
From aging outworks that are doomed to fall,
Consents to the bewitching of its shell
As long as it can hold the citadel
Where the progressive intellect has spent
A lifetime plotting the enlightenment
The backward and the beautiful dismiss
As mind’s revenge for its unloveliness.
Source: Poetry (April 2010)