Home > Poetry Magazine > Faith

Poetry Magazine

POEM
RELATED CONTENT Discover this poem's context and related poetry.

Faith

By Linda Pastan b. 1932 Linda Pastan

For Ira

With the seal of science

emblazoned

on your forehead,

like the old Good Housekeeping

Seal of Approval,

I believe what you tell me

about cells and molecules,

though I can't see them.

And though the language you speak

is full of numbers and symbols

I'll never understand;

though your tie is askew

and your hair unruly, still I believe

what you say about the size of the universe,

which is either expanding or contracting,

I've forgotten which already.

So if tomorrow you tell me

you made a small miscalculation,

that God indeed created the world

in 6 short days, then rested on the 7th,

that it was Eve who landed us

in all this trouble, I would believe you.

I would believe you

as I've always done before.

Source: Poetry (December 2002).

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