Women

WOMEN have no wilderness in them,

They are provident instead,

Content in the tight hot cell of their hearts

To eat dusty bread.

They do not see cattle cropping red winter grass,

They do not hear

Snow water going down under culverts

Shallow and clear.

They wait, when they should turn to journeys,

They stiffen, when they should bend.

They use against themselves that benevolence

To which no man is friend.

They cannot think of so many crops to a field

Or of clean wood cleft by an axe.

Their love is an eager meaninglessness

Too tense or too lax.

They hear in any whisper that speaks to them

A shout and a cry.

As like as not, when they take life over their door-sill

They should let it go by.

Louise Bogan