I thought of Judith in her tent,
Of Helen by the crackling wall,
Of Cressida, her bone-lust spent,
Of Catharine on the holy wheel:
I heard their woman-dust lament
The golden wound that does not heal.
What a wild air her small joints beat!
I leaned, I poured the raging wine
Until our bodies filled with light,
Mine with hers and hers with mine,
And we went soaring through the night
Where all the constellations shine.
Stanley Kunitz
AFRICAN VIOLETS
Neither obvious grave nor shallow light
Defend you, nor this most bitter pasture
Arrange another landscape for your going,
Who have been gentle. A house, strict as wind,
For your asylum, a stone for your horizon,
And for living hands these thick-leaved
Perishable violets grown through silence
Like the moss. Obedient you move, a servant
In
the shades of madness where they bloom,
Crying out across the darkening years
To your lost daughter who cannot, like
Persephone, come back through shadows.
Distracted by bird or snake you kneel at dusk
In
the terrible garden-a whole moon withered
In
your hair and your skin drawn back like
An eyelid from a face neither blind nor young.
Patricia Coombs
