THE DEVIL (Thomas Jay Ryan) 

The Book of Life by Hal Hartley

____________________

That's my problem. I can imagine all to well. I can imagine everything. A person's capacity for sacrifice, someone's life ruined by a simple misunderstanding, the possibility of disaster in just reaching out to shake someone's hand, the crippling of a person's self-esteem by an overheard remark. 

How can I be responsible for all that? Every intimacy engenders expectation and every expectation some unknown disappointment

If the world were only as large as this room okay sure then I'd be fine, but it's not.

The world is infinite, expansive, and full of possibility. It's debilitating.

-

JESUS (Martin Donovan)

The Book of Life by Hal Hartley

____________________

[After cancelling the Apocalypse]

To be there amongst them again was good. 

The innocent and the guilty all equally helpless and – as frightening as it was to admit – all deserving of forgiveness. 

What will become of them?

In a hundred years would they all be born in test tubes? 

Or perhaps evolved to computers and become disembodied digital intelligence machines?

Would they remember who I was? 

Would they remember what I said? 

Would it matter? 

Maybe someone else will come along and say pretty much the same thing. Would anyone notice?

In a hundred years would they be living on other planets? 

Would the earth still exist? 

Would they engineer themselves genetically so that disease would become a thing of the past? 

Would they all just become one big multi-ethnic race?

Would they discover the secret of the universe? 

And God? Would they become gods themselves?

What will they eat? 

What sort of houses will they live in? Cities? 

Would they still have to go to work everyday?

How smart will they get? 

And will being smarter make them happier?

Will they speak the same language?

Will they make love?

Will they still believe that life is sacred? 

Will it matter? 

Do we matter?

BORIS PASTERNAK
"Mephistopheles"

____________________

Every Sunday they left a circus of dust behind them,
as they poured out on the turnpike in stately, overcowded
                                                                                           carriages,
and the showers found nobody at home,
and trampled through the bedroom windows.

It was a custom at these staid Sunday dinners
to serve courses of rain instead of roast-beef;
on the baroque sideboard, by the Sunday silver,
the wind cut corners like a boy on a new bicycle.

Upstairs, the curtain-rods whirled, untouched;
the curtains rose like a salvo to the ceiling.
Outside the burghers kept losing themselves,
they showed up chewing straws by cow-ponds.

Later, when the long cortege of carriages
approached the city wall,
the horses shied
from the shadow of the Gothic gallows.

The devil in blood-red stockings with rose rosettes
danced along the sunset-watered road—
he was as red
as a boiling lobster.

One thought a snort of indignation
had ripped the lid of Heaven
from the skyline’s low vegetation;
the devil’s ribbons fluttered and danced.

The carriages swam through his eyes like road-signs;
he scarcely lifted a finger in greeting.
He rolled on his heels, he rumbled with laughter,
he sidled off hugging Faust, his pupil.

If you enjoyed this poem, why not read …



The Paris Review - Issue 26 (Fall 1961)