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I have drafted up a poetic response to Johnson's article....I'm still working thru the article itself, which I very much admire.

Here's the poem....It uses some of the rhetorical devices Johnson discusses.

For the Living: Unanswerable Questions

I had one once, a child, an abortion --
each with my alcoholic spouse,
no good father even to the living child.
Who, I asked, would rear the child,
pay our bills, set its life a loving path?
Who, in me, remaining for the last?

And why would giving my child, fully born, to you
have been the better way?
How is bringing child to term,
three-quarter-year ensemble,
just and fair?
Continuing life, an opportunity to see
him/her, my daughter/son not yet, then
no longer, mine?
A trial in otherness,
gone not dead but to my life,
resuscible by phone, to face, by law,
if some years hence?

Or given as a gift, a sister's gift, my friend?
Monstrous, I think, to rob it of a peaceful grave
in me, where both of us are born
when you, my child, appear.

Better you should never eat or play,
leave room for my living child?

Better we should say,
if this one ends and no more take its place,
then earth remains for us.

This is a different love, not waste..
****
Thanks.
Mary Clurman '63