Written by
Philip Larkin |
In this dream that dogs me I am part
Of a silent crowd walking under a wall,
Leaving a football match, perhaps, or a pit,
All moving the same way. After a while
A second wall closes on our right,
Pressing us tighter. We are now shut in
Like pigs down a concrete passage. When I lift
My head, I see the walls have killed the sun,
And light is cold. Now a giant whitewashed D
Comes on the second wall, but much too high
For them to recognise: I await the E,
Watch it approach and pass. By now
We have ceased walking and travel
Like water through sewers, steeply, despite
The tread that goes on ringing like an anvil
Under the striding A. I crook
My arm to shield my face, for we must pass
Beneath the huge, decapitated cross,
White on the wall, the T, and I cannot halt
The tread, the beat of it, it is my own heart,
The walls of my room rise, it is still night,
I have woken again before the word was spelt.
|
Written by
Rossy Evelin Lima |
I am a beautiful broken woman,
my arms separated in three levels.
Thunderous is my independent torso,
my torso of perfect size,
my torso a treasure box, an unrestricted treasure box
in which I keep the thirst that I resist.
My legs, also cut in three,
are the trinity of my dismembered temple,
transformed pieces made
unstoppable,
they are the flow of the sea
and they sail at will.
My shattered hands are deer crowns,
rooted stems
that whittle their own path.
Hands so free!
I am a beheaded woman,
a glorified decapitated woman.
My head is a nimbus,
for I am the queen
and my body is the empire.
I
go on
limitless,
vacant in all my sovereignty.
The shackles that once held me
slid through my broken bones.
I am the liberated severed woman,
the woman without yoke or tether.
|