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Hypocrite Women

Hypocrite women, how seldom we speak

of our own doubts, while dubiously

we mother man in his doubt!

 

 

And if at Mill Valley perched in the trees

the sweet rain drifting through western air

a white sweating bull of a poet told us

 

 

our ***** are ugly—why didn't we

admit we have thought so too? (And

what shame? They are not for the eye!)

 

 

No, they are dark and wrinkled and hairy,

caves of the Moon ... And when a

dark humming fills us, a

 

 

coldness towards life,

we are too much women to

own to such unwomanliness.

 

 

Whorishly with the psychopomp

we play and plead—and say

nothing of this later. And our dreams,

 

 

with what frivolity we have pared them

like toenails, clipped them like ends of

split hair.

d
Written by
Denise Levertov
1923-1997 / English
Lines·Words
21·130
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