Marian Kaplun Shapiro

Disobedience is a conscious process. To be disobedient, you have to know the rule you are disobeying! It’s not a process I take lightly – it’s usually a matter of deep thought and conscience. It draws on the Quaker principle which relies on the ‘still small voice’ within. The weighmaster of De Hekzewaag epitomizes that principle, thus appealing to me.

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De Hekzewaag, 1595, Oudewater


The city had a public scale used to weigh cheese and flour and, upon occasion,
people. Current superstition held that witches were lighter than their height
and build would suggest....The scale in Oudewater was thought to be infallible,
a last resort....The weighing was performed with due ceremony....And not a
single verdict ever came out negative! The suspected witches were free to return
to their homelands without fear, bearing written affidavits that their weight was
exactly what it should be.


                    Wislawa Szymborska, Nonrequired Reading, p. 36

 

They come to be weighed.
Afraid. Alone.

              A widow, used to following
the words of men, thinks, Didn’t I
once wish my husband gone? His rough
hands, his harsh words? And since
he died I’ve oft been wakened by
my own screams. O God
help me to repent!
                        
                          A beauty, just
thirteen,  accused. Consorting with
the devil, they say. Why else
have all our babies died? Why else
our husbands led astray? Bodies
ruined, hearts bitter, they cry
Bewitched!  Defiant, she flaunts
her blooming figure, paints her lips,
grows her hair long.
                
                        The crippled
fortune-teller turns up
the Tarot card of Death. Soon
after, her daughter dies
of a mysterious fever, screaming
about flying insects. She
burns her daughter’s clothes. She
burns her cards. She curses God.

                       A crazy old
lady has been seen foaming
at the mouth and pouring forth
obscenities. Proudly she
declares herself a heks.  She
threatens her accusers with
the evil eye.

All found too heavy
to fly.  Not guilty,
says the weighmaster,
solemn and scientific.

All leave with their certificaets
van wegiaghe.
 
The weighmaster goes home. This
is a story about being weighed.

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Marian Kaplun Shapiro is the author of a professional book, Second Childhood (Norton, 1988),  a poetry book, Players In The Dream, Dreamers In The Play (Plain View Press, 2007) and  two chapbooks: Your Third Wish (Finishing Line, 2007); and The End Of The World, Announced On Wednesday (Pudding House, 2007). As a Quaker and a psychologist, her poetry often embeds the topics of peace and violence by addressing one within the context of the other. A resident of Lexington, she was five times named Senior Poet Laureate of Massachusetts. She was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2012