Pagan Virtues
- Pagan Virtues
If you have them, your day will overflowwith options; you can reexamineeverything that smells of dogmaor the forbidden, tip your hatto the great poem that is the body,maybe even uphold the beautiful
by renouncing the pretty.Prepare to be in trouble on holidays,which are holy days for others, but for youare days off, a chance to exerciseyour pleasures, perhaps speculate why prayernever seems to reach its destination.
Tell your churchgoing friendsthat you're more like a justice of the peacethan a witch or warlock, someone trying—with the help of the best that's been writtenand said, and without aid from the cloudy above—
to divine what's evil, investigate what's good,attempt to live in a world a person fromanother world might want to muck around in,raise children, guide them to discoverfor themselves what it means to be a citizen. [End Page 20]
Stephen Dunn is an American poet and educator. Dunn has written fifteen collections of poetry. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his 2001 collection, Different Hours, and has received an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
