Came across a poem- I really like it. It is by Rosario Castellanos and here it is:

Learning About Things

They taught me things all wrong,
the ones who teach things:
my parents, the teacher, the priest.
You have to be a good girl, they told me.

It’s enough to be good. Because the good person
gets a piece of candy, a medal, all the love, and heaven, too.

And it’s very easy to be good. All you have to do is lower
your eyelids
in order not to see or judge what others do
because it does not pertain to you.

You just don’t have to open your mouth not to protest
when someone shoves you because they didn’t
mean to hurt you or
they couldn’t help it or
because God is testing the mettle of your soul.

But, anyhow, when something bad does happen to you
you must accept it, even be grateful for it
but not return it. And don’t ask why.
Because good people
are not curious.

And you have to give. If you own a cape, cut it in two
and give one-half to someone else
-even though that someone else may very well be
a collector of other halves of capes.
That’s his business and your right hand must ignore
what your left hand... etc., etc.

And you must turn both cheeks. Ah, yes.

They won’t always be blows.

It may be a bouquet of flowers that gives you
hay fever. Or the seafood that gives
you an allergy.
Sometimes praise,
which if not false cuts to the quick
and if it is false offends. Forgive,
because that is what good people do.

So I obeyed. For it is known that
obedience is the greatest virtue.

So the years went by
And I was that stumbling block
the absent-minded tripped over or, better yet,
a punching bag
the strong tried out their skill on.

Sometimes at cards I would deal a royal flush
but this cleverness rained indifferently
upon my friends
and my friends’ friends,
I mean, my enemies.

So then I sat down to wait for the medal,
the piece of candy, and the smile, in short,
the prize in this world.

But all I saw was scorn for my own weakness,
hate for having been the tool
of others’ malice.

Since when did I have the right to want to canonize
myself using others’ vices or defects?
Why was I electing myself
the only chosen one?
Why was I that grain of sand in the works
that paralyzes every function?
Paralyzed, the doers were thinking.
And I was the efficient cause of their thoughts.
So for me there was only contempt.

Until I finally understood. So I made myself
into a well-oiled cog with which the machine
now turns perfectly.

A cog. I don’t have
any specific name or any attribute
according to which I can classify myself
as any better or any worse or even more or less useful
than any of the other cogs.

If I should have to come up with a justification
for someone (and there isn’t anyone- there never was any
witness for what happens)
I would say that I was in my place,
that I spun in the right direction at
the required speed and the required frequency.
That I never tried to get them to replace me
ahead of time or to allow me to continue once
I had been declared useless.

Before I finish I want to make it perfectly clear
that I did none of these things
out of humility. Since when are cogs humble?
Ridiculous! And that certainly
my behavior cannot be attributed to hope.

No, for a long time now heaven is a factor
that doesn’t figure in my calculations.

Conformity? Perhaps. Which, in a cog, like me,
is not in any way a merit,
but rather, at best, a condition.


I don't generally read much poetry- so I am probably putting up a famous poem and I don't know it. This poem just spoke to me. I just thought I would put it up for people to read.