I went to school most of my life at a small school
in New York run by the Ethical Culture Society, in which we
had ethics class once a week for 12 years
and discussed such issues as who to throw out of the lifeboat
when there are too many people.
And my favorite issue that kept recurring was the one
about, what do you do if you're in a museum
and it catches fire?
Do you save the people or the pictures?
[LAUGHTER]
Actually, this poem-- it's called Ethics.
And it-- my proudest moment was when I found out
that it was read on the floor of the United States Senate
during the ethics hearings of Senator Williams from New
Jersey.
I don't know whether it affected the outcome.
Ethics.
In ethics class so many years ago,
our teacher asked this question every fall--
if there were a fire in a museum,
which would you save, a Rembrandt painting
or an old woman who hadn't many years left anyhow?
Restless, on hard chairs, caring little for pictures or old age,
we'd opt one year for life, the next for art, and always
half-heartedly.
Sometimes the woman borrowed my grandmother's face,
leaving her usual kitchen to wander some drafty
half-imagined museum.
One year feeling clever, I replied,
why not let the woman decide herself?
Linda, the teacher, would report eschews
the burdens of responsibility.
This fall in a real museum, I stand
before a real Rembrandt, old woman, or nearly so, myself.
The colors within this frame are darker than autumn, darker
even than winter, the brands of earth,
the earth's most radiant elements
burn through the canvas.
I know now that woman and painting and season
are almost one, and all beyond saving by children.