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I went to school most of
my life at a small school

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in New York run by the Ethical
Culture Society, in which we

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had ethics class once
a week for 12 years

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and discussed such issues as
who to throw out of the lifeboat

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when there are too many people.

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And my favorite issue that
kept recurring was the one

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about, what do you do
if you're in a museum

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and it catches fire?

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Do you save the people
or the pictures?

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[LAUGHTER]

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Actually, this poem--
it's called Ethics.

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And it-- my proudest
moment was when I found out

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that it was read on the floor
of the United States Senate

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during the ethics hearings
of Senator Williams from New

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Jersey.

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I don't know whether it
affected the outcome.

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Ethics.

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In ethics class
so many years ago,

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our teacher asked this
question every fall--

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if there were a
fire in a museum,

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which would you save,
a Rembrandt painting

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or an old woman who hadn't
many years left anyhow?

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Restless, on hard chairs, caring
little for pictures or old age,

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we'd opt one year for life,
the next for art, and always

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half-heartedly.

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Sometimes the woman borrowed
my grandmother's face,

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leaving her usual kitchen
to wander some drafty

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half-imagined museum.

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One year feeling
clever, I replied,

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why not let the
woman decide herself?

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Linda, the teacher,
would report eschews

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the burdens of responsibility.

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This fall in a real
museum, I stand

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before a real Rembrandt, old
woman, or nearly so, myself.

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The colors within this frame
are darker than autumn, darker

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even than winter,
the brands of earth,

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the earth's most
radiant elements

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burn through the canvas.

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I know now that woman
and painting and season

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are almost one, and all
beyond saving by children.

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