by Carole Stone

For Simone Weil
      1909-1943

I lie in my hospital bed,
no longer eating,
see evil,
gloomy, monotonous,
boring.
All my life I’ve freed
myself of ignorance.
Republican friends
laughed when I held
a rifle in Spain, me
with my poor eyesight
shooting at Falangists.
God, a distant witness,
tells me to fight war,
exploitation.
Give to the poor.
He wants me to love
the world.
Beauty and affliction,
inseparable.

Carole Stone is a Distinguished Professor of English and Creative Writing, emerita, Montclair State University. She has published five books of poetry. Her recent poems have appeared in Sequestrum, Presence, A Catholic Journal, and Blue Fifth Review.