A Great Reckoning

Excerpts from “Half-hanged Mary” from Morning in the Burned House: New Poems by Margaret Atwood. In the U.S.: Copyright © 1995 by Margaret Atwood. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved. In Canada: Copyright © O. W. Toad. Reprinted by permission of McClelland & Stewart, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited.

Excerpts from “Herman Melville,” copyright © 1940 and renewed 1968 by W. H. Auden; from W. H. Auden Collected Poems by W. H. Auden. Used by permission of Random House, an imprint and division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.