2003-12-18 @ 1:50 p.m.

permanent mood:

Margaret Atwood

i)

Behind glass in Mexico

this clay doll draws

its lips back in a snarl;

despite its beautiful dusty shawl,

it wishes to be dangerous.

ii)

See how the dolls resent us,

with their bulging foreheads

and minimal chins, their flat bodies

never allowed to bulb and swell,

their faces of little thugs.

This is not a smile,

this glossy mouth, two stunted teeth;

the dolls gaze at us

with the filmed eyes of killers.

iii)

There have always been dolls

as long as there have been people

In the trash heaps and abandoned temples,

the dolls pile up;

the sea is filling with them.

What causes them?

Or are they gods, causeless,

something to talk to

when you have to talk,

something to throw against the wall?

A doll is a witness

who cannot die,

with a doll you are never alone.

On the long journey under the earth,

in the boat with two prows,

there were always dolls.

is.

iv)

Or did we make them

because we needed to love someone

and could not love each other?

It was love, after all,

that rubbed the skins from their grey cheeks,

crippled their fingers,

snarled their hair, brown or dull gold.

Hate would merely have smashed them.

You change, but the doll

I made of you lives on,

a white body leaning

in a sunlit window, the features

wearing away with time,

frozen in the gaunt pose

of a single day,

holding in its plaster hand

your doll of me.

v)

Or: all dolls come

from the land of the unborn,

the almost-born; each

doll is a future

dead at the roots,

a voice heard only

on breathless nights,

a desolate white memento.

Or: these are the lost children,

those who have died or thickened

to full growth and gone away.

The dolls are their souls or cast skins,

which line the shelves of our bedrooms

and museums, disguised as outmoded toys,

images of our sorrow,

shedding around themselves

five inches of limbo.

bo.