The spirit of Jane lives on in you, my mother says trying to describe who I am. I feel like the girl in the late-night movie who gazes up in horror at the portrait of her freaky ancestor as she realizes they wear the same gaudy pendant round their necks. For as long as I can remember, my grandfather has made the same slip: he sits in his kitchen, his gelatinous blue eyes fixed on me. Well Jane, he says, I think I’ll have another cup of coffee.
Copyright © 2005 by Maggie Nelson. From Jane: A Murder In Poems. Reprinted with permission of Soft Skull Press.
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
This poem is in the public domain.