Men
Listen to the poem in English
Men by Dorothy Parker
(from Enough Rope, 1926)
They hail you as their morning star
Because you are the way you are.
If you return the sentiment,
They’ll try to make you different;
And once they have you, safe and sound,
They want to change you all around.
Your moods and ways they put a curse on;
They’d make of you another person.
They cannot let you go your gait;
They influence and educate.
They’d alter all that they admired.
They make me sick, they make me tired.
Author Notes
Dorothy Parker, American writer (1893-1967)
Dorothy Parker’s main works include poems, short stories, and sketches. A view of the human situation as simultaneously tragic and funny is characteristic of her writings. From 1916 until 1920 she was a drama and literature critic at Vogue and Vanity Fair magazines. She wrote book reviews for The New Yorker from 1927 until 1933. Her last major undertaking was to collaborate on a drama, The Ladies of the Corridor, in 1953. She was among the founders of an informal literary circle–the Algonquin Round Table.