Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Alan Shapiro’s "In the Kingdom of Pleasure" is a poem that interweaves the intimate, everyday moment of a mother bathing her child with the biblical story of Moses, set adrift in the Nile and rescued by Pharaoh’s daughter. By juxtaposing these two moments—one ancient, one contemporary—the poem explores the fragile sanctuary of childhood, the transient safety of maternal care, and the looming inevitability of historical and religious violence. The poem’s title suggests a fleeting realm of joy and protection, a momentary respite before the harsh realities of law, fate, and suffering impose themselves.

The poem opens in mythic tones, referencing the biblical story of Moses? rescue: "Unwitting accomplice in the scheme of law / she thought to violate, man-set as it was." Pharaoh’s decree had ordered the death of Hebrew male infants, and yet his daughter, "unwitting" in her defiance, acts on impulse rather than decree. The phrase "man-set as it was" suggests that this law, though powerful, is artificial, something that can be ignored in the face of immediate human need. The imagery that follows—"as inconsequential as the sun / at midnight, drought at flood-time"—underscores the paradoxical absurdity of such rigid decrees in the face of real human suffering. The decree demands death, but life continues anyway.

The moment of Moses? rescue is tender and instinctive: "when she heard a baby in the tall reeds / at the river’s brink, she was nobody’s / daughter, subject of no rule / but the one his need for her established." In this moment, Pharaoh’s daughter is not defined by lineage, politics, or power, but by her immediate, instinctive response to the helplessness of the child. Her identity is dissolved in the face of an unspoken, universal law: care. The phrase "the one his need for her established" suggests that in the presence of vulnerability, love and responsibility are not chosen but commanded by the situation itself. Her response—"as she knelt down to quell his crying / with a little tune just seeing him there / had taught her how to hum."—depicts nurture as something intuitive, something that emerges naturally in response to need. The hum, like maternal love, is spontaneous and beyond conscious learning.

The poem then shifts, linking this mythic moment with a contemporary one: "Now as then, / it is the same tune, timelessly in time, / your mother hums as she kneels down / beside your little barge of foam." The comparison makes clear that the act of nurturing a child—whether in an ancient river or a modern bathtub—exists outside of history, existing "timelessly in time." The contemporary child’s "little barge of foam" recalls Moses’ reed basket, subtly linking them as figures of innocence floating through a world that cannot always protect them.

The description of the bathing scene is deeply sensual and tender: "smiling to see you smile when she wrings / out from the sponge a ragged string / of water over the chest and belly, / the dimpled loins, the bud so far / from flowering." The imagery is delicate, focused on the body in its most innocent, pre-sexual state. The reference to "the bud so far / from flowering" reinforces the child?s complete vulnerability, untouched by the complexities of adulthood or suffering. The moment is pure, filled with laughter: "and the foot slick / as a fish your hand tries to hold up / till it slips back splashing / with such mild turbulence that she laughs, / and you laugh to see her laugh." The playfulness here encapsulates the joy of shared moments between mother and child, the reciprocal nature of love—her laughter begets his, and vice versa.

But this moment of pleasure exists within the shadow of a future that has not yet arrived: "Here now, as it was then, it is still / so many years before the blood’s smeared / over doorposts, before the Nile clots / with the first-born, and the women / wailing, wailing throughout the city." The biblical story that began with Moses? rescue leads inexorably to the plagues of Egypt and the slaughter of first-born sons. This sudden shift from the gentle bathing scene to mass death is jarring, reinforcing the fragility of the child’s safety. The wailing women echo the mothers who once wept for their doomed children when Pharaoh ordered them killed. History will repeat itself—innocence will always be threatened, joy will always be temporary.

Yet, for now, the child and mother remain untouched by history’s cruelty: "here now again is the kingdom of pleasure, / where they are safe still, mother and child." The repetition of "here now" emphasizes the present moment’s sanctuary, a world apart from destiny, decree, or suffering. The phrase "kingdom of pleasure" suggests that pleasure itself is a kind of fleeting dominion, something that can be occupied but never ruled indefinitely.

The final lines shift to the voice of a father, a figure largely absent from the rest of the poem: "and where a father can still pray, Lord, / Jealous Chooser, Devouring Law, keep / away from them, just keep away." The description of God as "Jealous Chooser, Devouring Law" aligns him with the Pharaoh, with fate itself, with forces that decree suffering from above. The father, unlike the mother, cannot act—he can only pray. His plea is not for divine guidance or intervention, but simply for these forces to stay away. His words acknowledge that the joy of the kingdom of pleasure is fragile, always under threat from laws and forces beyond human control.

The poem is a meditation on parental love, historical recurrence, and the brief sanctuary that exists before suffering intrudes. The bathing scene becomes a moment of suspended time, a paradise before the inevitability of loss, suffering, and mortality. By intertwining the ancient and the personal, Shapiro suggests that no child is truly safe from history, that all moments of parental joy exist in the shadow of what is to come. The mother and child laugh, the father prays, and outside the kingdom of pleasure, the devouring law waits.

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