Margaret Atwood

In restaurants we argue
over which of us will pay for your funeral
though the real question is
whether or not I will make you immortal.

She has been condemned to death by hanging. A man
may escape this death by becoming the hangman, a
woman by marrying the hangman. But at the present
time there is no hangman; thus there is no escape.

Confess: it’s my profession
that alarms you.
This is why few people ask me to dinner,
though Lord knows I don’t go out of my way to be scary.

In the secular night you wander around
alone in your house. It’s two-thirty.
Everyone has deserted you,
or this is your story;

Winter. Time to eat fat
and watch hockey. In the pewter mornings, the cat,
a black fur sausage with yellow
Houdini eyes, jumps up on the bed and tries

i
The children on the lawn
joined hand to hand
go round and round

Starspangled cowboy
sauntering out of the almost-
silly West, on your face
a porcelain grin,

In that country the animals
have the faces of people:
the ceremonial
cats possessing the streets