Margaret Atwood - The Handmaid's Tale - Chapter 6 lyrics

A block past All Flesh, Ofglen pauses
As if hesitant about which way to go
We have a choice we could go straight back
Or we could walk the long way
Around we already know which
Way we will take, because we always take it
"I'd like to pass by the
Church, " says Ofglen, as if piously
"All right, " I say
Though I know as well as she
Does what she's really after
We walk, sedately the sun is out, in
The sky there are white fluffy clouds
The kind that look like headless sheep
Given our wings
Our blinkers, it's hard to look up
Hard to get the full view, of the sky
Of anything but we can do it
A little at a time, a quick move
Of the head, up and down
To the side and back we have learned
To see the world in gasps
To the right, if you could walk along
There's a street that would take
You down towards the
River there's a boathouse
Where they kept the sculls
Once, and some bridges trees, green banks
Where you could sit and watch the
Water, and the young men
With their naked arms
Their oars lifting into the sunlight as
They played at winning on
The way to the river are the old dormitories
Used for something else now, with
Their fairy tale turrets
Painted white and gold and blue when we
Think of the past it's the beautiful
Things we pick out we want to
Believe it was all like that
The football stadium is that way too
Where they hold the Men's
Salvagings as well as
The football games they still have those
I don't go to the river anymore
Or over bridges or on the
Subway, although there's a station right
There we're not allowed on
There are Guardians now
There's no official reason for us to go
Down those steps, ride on the
Trains under the river
Into the main city why would we want
To go from here to there?
We would be up to no good
And they would know it
The church is a small one
One of the first erected
Here, hundreds of years ago
It isn't used anymore, except as a museum
Inside it you can see paintings, of
Women in long sombre dresses
Their hair covered by white caps
And of upright men
Darkly clothed and unsmiling our ancestors
Admission is free
We don't go in, though, but
Stand on the path
Looking at the churchyard the
Old gravestones are still
There, weathered, eroding
With their skulls and crossed bones
Memento mori, their dough-faced angels
Their winged hourglasses to remind
Us of the passing
Of mortal time, and, from a later
Century, their urns and willow trees
For mourning
They haven't fiddled with the gravestones
Or the church either it's only the
More recent history that offends them
Ofglen's head is bowed
As if she's praying she
Does this every time maybe, I think
There's someone, someone in particular gone
For her too a man, a child but
I can't entirely
Believe it i think of her as a woman
For whom every act is done for
Show, is acting rather than a real act
She does such things to look good
I think she's out to make the best of it
But that is what I must look like to her
As well how can it be otherwise?
Now we turn our backs on
The church and there is
The thing we've in truth come
To see: the Wall
The Wall is hundreds of years
Old too or over a hundred, at least like the
Sidewalks, it's red brick, and must once
Have been plain but handsome now the
Gates have sentries and there
Are ugly new floodlights mounted on
Metal posts above it
And barbed wire along the bottom and broken
Glass set in concrete along the top
No one goes through those gates willingly
The precautions
Are for those trying to get out, though to
Make it even as far as the Wall, from
The inside, past the electronic alarm system
Would be next to impossible
Beside the main gateway there are
Six more bodies hanging, by
The necks, their hands tied in front of them
Their heads in white bags
Tipped sideways onto their
Shoulders there must have been a Men's
Salvaging early this morning i
Didn't hear the
Bells perhaps I've become used to them
We stop, together as if on signal
And stand and look at the bodies it doesn't
Matter if we look we're supposed to look:
This is what they are there for
Hanging on the Wall sometimes
They'll be there for days, until
There's a new batch
So as many people as possible will
Have the chance to see them
What they are hanging from is
Hooks the hooks have
Been set into the brickwork of the Wall
For this purpose not all of them are occupied
The hooks look like appliances for the
Armless or steel question marks
Upside down and sideways
It's the bags over the heads
That are the worst
Worse than the faces themselves would be it
Makes the men like dolls on which the faces
Have not yet been painted like scarecrows
Which in a
Way is what they are, since they are meant to
Scare or as if their heads are sacks
Stuffed with some undifferentiated material
Like flour or dough it's
The obvious heaviness of the
Heads, their vacancy
The way gravity pulls them down
And there's no life
Anymore to hold them up the heads are zeros
Though if you look and look, as we are doing
You can see the outlines of the
Features under the white cloth
Like gray shadows
The heads are the heads of snowmen
With the coal eyes and the carrot noses
Fallen out the heads are melting
But on one bag there's blood, which
Has seeped through the white cloth, where
The mouth must have been it makes
Another mouth, a small red one
Like the mouths painted with thick brushes
By kindergarten children a child's idea
Of a smile this smile of blood
Is what fixes the attention
Finally these are not snowmen after all
The men wear white coats
Like those worn by doctors or scientists
Doctors and scientists aren't the only
Ones, there are others
But they must have had a run on them
This morning each has a placard hung around
His neck to show why he has been
Executed: a drawing of a human fetus
They were doctors, then, in the time before
When such things were legal angel makers
They used to call them or
Was that something else?
They've been turned up now
By searches through
Hospital records, or, or more likely
Since most hospitals
Destroyed such records once it
Became clear what was going to happen by
Informants: ex-nurses perhaps, or a
Pair of them
Since evidence from a single woman
Is no longer admissible or another doctor
Hoping to
Save his own skin or someone already accused
Lashing out at an enemy, or at random
In some desperate bid for safety though
Informants are not always pardoned
These men, we've been told
Are like war criminals it's no
Excuse that what they did
Was legal at the time: their
Crimes are retroactive they
Have committed atrocities and must
Be made into examples
For the rest though this is hardly
Needed no woman in her right mind, these
Days, would seek to prevent a birth
Should she be so lucky as to conceive
What we are supposed to feel towards these
Bodies is hatred and scorn this
Isn't what I feel these bodies hanging
On the Wall are time travelers
Anachronisms they've come here from the past
What I feel towards them is blankness
What I feel is that
I must not feel what I feel is partly relief
Because none of these men is Luke
Luke wasn't a doctor isn't
I look at the one red smile
The red of the smile is
The same as the red of the
Tulips in Serena Joy's garden
Towards the base of the flowers
Where they are beginning to heal the
Red is the same but
There is no connection the tulips
Are not tulips of blood, the red
Smiles are not flowers
Neither thing makes a comment
Or the other the tulip is not a reason for
Disbelief in the hanged man, or vice
Versa each thing is valid and really
There it is through a
Field of such valid objects that
I must pick my way, every day and
In every way i put a lot
Of effort into making such distinctions
I need to make them i need to be very clear
In my own mind

I feel a tremor in the woman beside me is she
Crying? In what way could it
Make her look good?
I can't afford to know, My
Own hands are clenched
I note, tight around the handle of my basket
I won't give anything away
Ordinary, said Aunt Lydia
Is what you are used to this may not
Seem ordinary to you now, but
After a time it will
It will become ordinary