To the Mannequins

Adorable images,

Plaster of Paris

Lilies of the field,

You are not alive, therefore

Pathos will be out of place.

But I have learned

A strange fact about your fate,

And it is this:

After you go out of fashion

Beneath your many fashions,

Or when your elbows and knees

Have been bruised powdery white,

So that you are no good to anybody—

They will take away your gowns,

Your sables and bathing suits,

Leaving exposed before all men

Your inaccessible bellies

And pointless nubilities.

Movers will come by night

And load you all into trucks

And take you away to the Camps,

Where soldiers, or the State Police,

Will use you as targets

For small-arms practice,

Leading me to inquire,

Since pathos is out of place,

What it is that they are practicing.

November 1961

Copyright Credit: “To the Mannequins” from The Collected Poems of Howard Nemerov. Reprinted by per- mission of University of Chicago Press.

Source: Poetry (April 2012)