Difference In The Dark Poem by gershon hepner

They say the pot calls every kettle black
and pokers poke fun always at a shovel,
and chiropractors call a doc a quack,
but please don’t call my home sweet home a hovel.

They say that every lawyer is a shark,
and that a sexy woman has to be a slut,
but I can’t tell the difference in the dark,
or when the light’s on, when my eyes are shut.

When standing up, a man deserves applause,
but if he can’t, what should you call his poker
when narrative can’t keep up with the laws
of nature, and the poker is a joker?


Inspired by a review by Charles Rosen of a new edition of the Essays of Montaigne published by Pléiade (NYR, February 14 2008) :

He was, in fact, only fifty-five years old, but he was already experiencing the sense of old age. In another essay he describes what advancing years have done to him. “I can no longer make children standing up” [perhaps that was considered a proof of virility in his time]….
A view of adultery as completely natural is developed at length…At one point he addresses all male readers directly: “And of you have cuckolded somebody”-and that logically means it will happen to you. In the East Indies, he reports, a married woman is expected to be chaste, but she is allowed to abandon herself to any man who gives her an elephant. The essay best reveals an essential trait of Montaigne: he had almost no sense of guilt-regret often enough, of course, but no guilt It is no wonder that he thought repentance more a nuisance than a virtue. “On Some Verses of Virgil” is not only a nostalgic and frank discussion of sex, but also a collection of misogynistic anecdotes and jokes, banalities and classical traditions, largely to establish that it is absurd to force women to live by rules fashioned by men, and to require them to believe that that are not interested in sex, when they are in fact more lascivious than men—having so much less to occupy them…The coexist happily. And the idea is reinforced by further commonplaces:

It is easier to attack one sex than to excuse the other. As we say: the ot calls the kettle black. [More literally, the poker makes fun of the shovel.]


2/2/08