Maybe It’s Only the Monotony

By Gail Mazur b. 1937 Gail Mazur

of these long scorching days

but today my daughter

is truly exasperating—

Stop it! I shout—or I’ll—

and I twist her little pinked arm

slowly,

calibrating my ferocity—

You can’t hurt me you can’t hurt me!

She’s so defiant, glowering,

glaring at me—

but frightened,

her eyes bright with tears—

See, I’m not even crying!

I see. But it’s the angel

of extermination

I see, shining

in his black trappings,

and turning ecstatically

toward him, a little Jewish girl

tempts him

to play his game of massacre.

—after Vittorio Sereni

Gail Mazur, “Maybe It’s Only the Monotony” from Zeppo's First Wife: New & Selected Poems (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2005). Copyright © 2001 by Gail Mazur. Reprinted with the permission of the author.

Source: They Can't Take That Away from Me (The University of Chicago Press, 2001)

Biography

After nearly 13 years of apprenticing herself to poetry, during which she studied with Robert Lowell and immersed herself in the Boston/Cambridge literary scene, Mazur published her first collection, Nightfire (1978), at age 40. Other books include The Pose of Happiness (1986); They Can’t Take That Away from Me (2001); and Zeppo’s First Wife: New & Selected Poems (2006). Tess Taylor, interviewing Mazur for the Atlantic Monthly . . .

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