On the Steps of the Jefferson Memorial

By Linda Pastan b. 1932 Linda Pastan

We invent our gods

the way the Greeks did,

in our own image—but magnified.

Athena, the very mother of wisdom,

squabbled with Poseidon

like any human sibling

until their furious tempers

made the sea writhe.

Zeus wore a crown

of lightning bolts one minute,

a cloak of feathers the next,

as driven by earthly lust

he prepared to swoop

down on Leda.

Despite their power,

frailty ran through them

like the darker veins

in the marble of these temples

we call monuments.

Looking at Jefferson now,

I think of the language

he left for us to live by.

I think of the slave

in the kitchen downstairs.

Linda Pastan, “On the Steps of the Jefferson Memorial” from Prairie Schooner (Summer 2007). Copyright © 2006 by Linda Pastan. Reprinted by permission of Prairie Schooner.

Source: Prairie Schooner (The University of Nebraska Press, 2007)

Biography

Poet Linda Pastan was raised in New York City but has lived for most of her life in Potomac, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, DC. In her senior year at Radcliffe College, Pastan won the Mademoiselle poetry prize (Sylvia Plath was the runner-up). Immediately following graduation, however, she decided to give up writing poetry in order to concentrate on raising her family. After ten years at home, her husband urged her to . . .

Continue reading this biography